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Title: The Mirror of the Graces
       Containing General Instructions for Combining Elegance,
       Simplicity, and Economy with Fashion in Dress; Hints on Female
       Accomplishments and Manners; and Directions for the Preservation
       of Health and Beauty

Author: Unknown

Release Date: April 7, 2022 [eBook #67790]

Language: English

Produced by: MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
             generously made available by The Internet Archive/American
             Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIRROR OF THE
GRACES ***





  THE

  MIRROR OF THE GRACES.

  CONTAINING

  GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

  FOR COMBINING

  ELEGANCE, SIMPLICITY, AND ECONOMY

  WITH FASHION IN DRESS;

  HINTS ON FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND MANNERS;

  AND DIRECTIONS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF

  HEALTH AND BEAUTY.

  BY A LADY OF DISTINCTION.

  “If Beauty be woman’s weapon, it must be feathered by the Graces,
  pointed by the eye of Discretion, and shot by the hand of Virtue.”

  FROM THE LONDON EDITION.

  BOSTON:
  PUBLISHED BY FREDERIC S. HILL,
  NO. 7, WATER STREET.

  1831.




  CONTENTS.


  Preliminary Observations on the Subject                  5

  General Remarks on the Manners and Fashions of the
  Past and Present Times                                  14

  On the Female Form                                      19

  The same Subject, of Female Beauty, more explicitly
  considered                                              34

  General Thoughts on Dress and Personal Decoration       48

  On the Peculiarities of Dress, with reference to the
  Station of the Wearer                                   68

  Of the Detail of Dress                                  82

  On Deportment                                          105

  Peculiarities in Carriage and Demeanor                 110

  On the Management of the Person in Dancing, and in
  the exercise of other Female Accomplishments           126

  Continuation of the same Subject                       149

  Conclusion                                             156


  APPENDIX.

  On the Use of Corsets                                  163

  On the Ladies’ Passion for Levelling all Distinction of
  Dress                                                  173

  Recipes                                                183




 MIRROR

 OF

 THE GRACES.




PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS ON THE SUBJECT.

  “Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
  For contemplation he, and valor formed;
  For softness she, and sweet attractive grace;
  He for God only, she for God in him.”

  MILTON.


In discoursing on the degree of consequence, in the scale of creation,
that may be allowed to the human body, two extremes are generally
adopted. Epicureans, for obvious reasons, exalt our corporeal part to
the first rank; and Stoics, by opposite deductions, degrade it to the
last. But to neither of these opinions can the writer of these pages
concede.

The body is as much a part of the human creature as the mind; by its
outward expression, we convey to others a sense of our opinions,
hopes, fears, and affections--we communicate love, and we excite it.
We enjoy, not only the pleasures of the senses, but the delights which
shoot from mind to mind, in the pressure of a hand, the glance of an
eye, and the whisper of the heart. Shall we then despise this ready and
obedient vehicle of all that passes within the invisible soul? Shall
we contemn it as a lump of encumbering clay--as a piece of corruption,
fitter for the charnel-house than the bosom of affection?

These ascetic ideas may be consistent with the thankless superstition
of the ancient Zenos, or the modern fanatics, who see neither beauty
nor joyfulness in the works of the bounteous Lord of Nature; but the
rational and fair-judging mind, which acknowledges “use and decency”
in all the Creator’s works, while it turns from the pagan devotion
which the libertine pays to his own body, regards that inferior part
of himself with the respect which is due to it in consideration of its
Maker and its purpose.

“Reverence thyself!” says the philosopher, not only with relation to
the mind which directs, but to the body which executes. God created the
body, not only for usefulness, but adorned it with loveliness; and what
he has made so pleasing, shall we disesteem, and refuse to apply to its
admirable destination?--The very approving and innocent complacency
we all feel in the contemplation of beauty, whether it be that of a
landscape or of a flower, is a sufficient witness that the pleasure
which pervades our hearts at the sight of human charms, was planted
there by the Divine Framer of all things, as a principle of delight and
social attraction. To this end, then, I seek to turn your attention,
my fair countrywomen, upon YOURSELVES!--not only to the cultivation of
your minds, but to maintain in its intended station that inferior part
of yourselves, which mistaken gravity would, on the one hand, lead you
to neglect as altogether worthless; and vanity, on the other, incline
you too much to cherish, and egregiously to over-value.

From this you will gather, that the PERSON of a woman is the primary
subject of this discourse.

Mothers, perhaps, (those estimable mothers who value the souls as
the better parts of their daughters,) may start at such a text. But
I call them to recollect, that it is “good all things should be in
order!” This is a period when absurdity, bad taste, shamelessness, and
self-interest, in the shapes of tire-men and tire-women, have arranged
themselves in close siege around the beauty, and even chastity, of your
daughters; and to preserve these graces in their original purity, I, a
woman of virtue and a Christian, do not think it beneath my dignity to
lift my pen.

Dr. Knox will not refuse to be my auxiliary, as a grave auxiliary
may be necessary to give consequence to a subject usually deemed so
trivial. “Taste requires a congruity between the internal character
and the external appearance,” says he; “and the imagination will
involuntarily form to itself an idea of such a correspondence. First
ideas are in general of considerable consequence; and I should,
therefore, think it wise in the female world to take care that
their _appearance_ should not convey a forbidding idea to the most
superficial observer.”

Another author shall speak for me besides this respected moralist.
The very High Priest of the Graces, the discriminating Chesterfield,
declared, that “a prepossessing exterior is a perpetual letter of
recommendation.” To show how different such an exterior is from
affectation and extravagance, is one object of these pages; and I hope
that my fair and candid readers will, after perusal, lay them down with
a conviction that beauty is a blessing, and is to be used with maidenly
discretion; that modesty is grace; simplicity elegance; and consistency
the charm which rivets the attracted heart of well-judging men.

That you have sought my sentiments on these subjects makes it easier
to me to enter into the minute detail I meditate. Indeed, I have
ever blamed, as impolitic, the austerity which condemns, without
distinction, any attention to personal appearance. It is surely
more reasonable to direct the youthful mind to that medium between
negligence and nicety which will preserve the person in health and
elegance, than, by leaving a young woman ignorant of the real and
supposed advantages of these graces, render her liable to learn the
truth in the worst way from strangers, who will either insult her
aggravated deformity, or teach her to set off her before-obscured
charms with, perhaps, meretricious assistance.

It is unjust and dangerous to hold out false lights to young persons;
for, finding that their guides have, in one respect, designedly led
them astray, they may be led likewise to reject as untrue all else
they have been taught; and so nothing but disappointment, error, and
rebellion can be the consequence.

Let girls advancing to womanhood be told the true state of the world
with which they are to mingle. Let them know its real opinions on the
subjects connected with themselves as women, companions, friends,
relatives. Hide not from them what society thinks and expects on all
these matters; but fail not to show them, at the same time, where the
fashions of the day would lead them wrong--where the laws of heaven and
man’s approving (though not always submitting) reason, would keep them
right.

Let religion and morality be the foundation of the female character.
The artist may then adorn the structure without any danger to its
safety. When a girl is instructed on the great purposes of her
existence,--that she is an immortal being, as well as a mortal
woman,--you may, without fearing ill impressions, show her, that as we
admire the beauty of the rose, as well as esteem its medicinal power,
so her personal charms will be dear in the eyes of him whose heart is
occupied by the graces of her yet more estimable mind. We may safely
teach a well-educated girl, that virtue ought to wear an inviting
aspect--that it is due to her excellence to decorate her comely
apparel. But we must never cease to remember that it is VIRTUE we seek
to adorn. It must not be a merely beautiful form; for that, if it
possess not the charm of intelligence, the bond of rational tenderness,
is a frame without a soul--a statue which we look on and admire, pass
away and forget. We must impress upon the yet ingenuous maid, that
while beauty attracts, its influence is transient, unless it presents
itself as the harbinger of that good sense and principle which can
alone secure the affection of a husband, the esteem of friends, and the
respect of the world. Show her that regularity of features and symmetry
of form are not essentials in the composition of the woman whom the
wise man would select as the partner of his life. Seek, as an example,
some one of your less fair acquaintance, whose sweet disposition,
gentle manners, and winning deportment, render her the delight of her
kindred, the dear solace of her husband. Show your young and lovely
pupil what use this amiable woman has made of her few talents; and then
call on her to cultivate her more extraordinary endowments to the glory
of her Creator, the honor of her parents, and to the maintenance of her
own happiness in both worlds. To do this, requires that her aims should
be virtuous, and the means she employs to reach them of the same nature.

We know, from every record under heaven, from the sacred page to
that of the heathen world, that woman was made to be the help-mate
of man--that, by rendering herself pleasing in his sight, she is the
assuager of his pains, the solacer of his wo, the sharer of his joys,
the chief agent in the communication of his sublunary bliss. This
is beautifully alluded to in the Book of Genesis, where the work of
Creation is represented as incomplete, and the felicity of Paradise
itself imperfect, till woman was bestowed to consummate its delights:--

  “The world was sad! the garden was a wild;
  And man, the hermit, sighed--till woman smiled.”

We have all read in the sacred oracles, that “a woman’s desire is unto
her husband!” and for that tender relation, the first on earth, (for,
before the bonds of relationship, man and woman became a wedded pair,)
woman must leave father and mother, and cleave unto him alone. Hence,
I shall no longer beg the question, whether it be not right that a
chaste maid should adorn herself with the graces of youth and modesty,
and, with a sober reference to the duties of her sex, present herself a
candidate for the love and protection of manliness and virtue, in the
most agreeable manner possible.

By making the fairness of the body the sign of the mind’s purity, man
is imperceptibly attracted to the object designed for him by Heaven as
the partner of his life, the future mother of his children, and the
angel which is to accompany him into eternity. Hence, insignificant
as the means may seem, the end is great; and poor as we may choose to
consider them, we all feel their effects, and enjoy their sweetness.

Having thus explained my subject, my fair friends will readily
perceive, that there cannot be anything hostile to female delicacy in
the prosecution of my scheme. I give to woman all her privileges; I
allow her the empire of all her personal charms; I will assist her to
increase their force: but it must be with a constant reference to their
being the ensign of her more estimable mental attractions. She must
never suppose that when I insist on attention to person and manners,
I forget the mind and heart; or when I commend external grace, that I
pass unregarded the internal beauty of the virgin soul.

In order to give a regular and perspicuous elucidation of the several
branches of my subject, I shall arrange them under separate heads.
Sometimes I may illustrate by observations drawn from abroad, at other
times by remarks collected at home. Having been a traveller in my
youth, whilst visiting foreign courts with my husband, on an errand
connected with the general welfare of nations, I could not overlook the
influence which the women of every country hold over the morals and
happiness of the opposite sex in every rank and degree.

Fine taste in apparel I have ever seen the companion of pure morals,
whilst a licentious style of dress was as certainly the token of
the like laxity in manners and conduct. To correct this dangerous
fashion, ought to be the study and attempt of every mother--of every
daughter--of every woman.




GENERAL REMARKS ON THE MANNERS AND FASHIONS OF THE PAST AND PRESENT
TIMES.

  “Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes,
  Tenets with books, and principles with times.”

  POPE.


When Innocence left the world, astonished man blushed at his own
and his partner’s nakedness, and coverings were soon invented. For
many an age, the twisted foliage of trees, and the skins of beasts,
were the only garments which clothed our ancestors. Decoration was
unknown, excepting the wild flower, plucked from the luxuriant shrub,
the shell from the beach, or the berry off the tree. Nature was then
unsophisticated; and the lover looked for no other attraction in his
bride, than the peach-bloom on her cheek--the downcast softness of her
consenting eye.

In after times, when Avarice ploughed the earth, and Ambition bestrode
it, the gem and the silken fleece, the various product of the loom,
and the Tyrian mystery of dyes, all united to give embellishments to
beauty, and splendor to majesty of mien. But even at that period, when
the east and south laid their decorating riches at the feet of woman,
we see, by the sculpture yet remaining to us, that the dames of Greece
(the then exemplars of the world) were true to the simple laws of just
taste. The amply-folding robe, cast round the harmonious form; the
modest clasp and zone on the bosom; the braided hair, or the veiled
head; these were the fashions alike of the wife of a Phocion, and the
mistress of an Alcibiades. A chastened taste ruled at their toilets;
and from that hour to this, the forms and modes of Greece have been
those of the poet, the sculptor, and the painter.

Rome, queen of the world! the proud dictatress to Athenian and Spartan
dames, disdained not to array herself in their dignified attire; and
the statues of her virgins, her matrons, and her empresses, show, in
every portico of her ancient streets, the graceful fashions of her
Grecian province.

The irruption of the Goths and Vandals made it needful for women to
assume a more repulsive garb. The flowing robe, the easy shape, the
soft, unfettered hair, gave place to skirts, shortened for flight or
contest--to the hardened vest, and head buckled in gold or silver.

Thence, by a natural descent, have we the iron boddice, stiff
farthingale, and spiral coiffure, of the middle ages. The courts of
Charlemagne, of our Edwards, Henries, and Elizabeth, all exhibit
the figures of women as if in a state of siege. Such lines of
circumvallation and outworks; such impregnable bulwarks of whale-bone,
wood, and steel; such impassable mazes of gold, silver, silk, and
furbelows, met a man’s view, that, before he had time to guess it was
a woman that he saw, she had passed from his sight; and he only formed
a vague wish on the subject, by hearing, from an interested father or
brother, that the moving castle was one of the softer sex.

These preposterous fashions disappeared, in England, a short time after
the Restoration; they had been a little on the wane during the more
classic, though distressful reign of Charles I.; and what the beautiful
pencil of Vandyke shows us, in the graceful dress of Lady Carlisle and
Sacharissa, was rendered yet more correspondent to the soft undulations
of nature, in the garments of the lovely, but frail beauties of the
Second Charles’s court. But as change too often is carried to extremes,
in this case the unzoned tastes of the English ladies thought no
freedom too free; their vestments were gradually unloosened of the
brace, until another touch would have exposed the wearer to no thicker
covering than the ambient air.

The matron reign of Anne, in some measure, corrected this indecency.
But it was not till the accession of the House of Brunswick, that it
was finally exploded, and gave way by degrees to the ancient mode of
female fortification, by introducing the hideous Parisian fashion of
hoops, buckram stays, waists to the hips, screwed to the circumference
of a wasp, brocaded silks stiff with gold, shoes with heels so high as
to set the wearer on her toes; and heads, for quantity of false hair,
either horse or human, and height to outweigh, and perhaps outreach,
the Tower of Babel! These were the figures which our grandmothers
exhibited; nay, such was the appearance I myself made in my early
youth; and something like it may yet be seen at a drawing-room, on
court-days.

When the arts of Sculpture and Painting, in their fine specimens from
the chisels of Greece and the pencils of Italy, were brought into this
country, taste began to mould the dress of our female youth after their
more graceful fashion. The health-destroying boddice was laid aside;
brocades and whale-bone disappeared; and the easy shape and flowing
drapery again resumed the rights of nature and of grace. The bright
hues of auburn, raven, or golden tresses, adorned the head in its
native simplicity, putting to shame the few powdered _toupees_, which
yet lingered on the brow of prejudice and deformity.

Thus, for a short time, did the Graces indeed preside at the toilet of
the British beauty; but a strange caprice seems now to have dislodged
these gentle handmaids. Here stands affectation distorting the form
into a thousand unnatural shapes; and there, ill-taste, loading it
with grotesque ornaments, gathered (and mingled confusedly) from
Grecian and Roman models, from Egypt, China, Turkey, and Hindostan.
All nations are ransacked to equip a modern fine lady; and, after all,
she may perhaps strike a contemporary _beau_ as _a fine lady_, but no
son of nature could, at a glance, possibly find out that she meant to
represent an _elegant woman_.

To impress upon your minds, my fair friends, that symmetry of figure
ought ever to be accompanied by harmony of dress, and that there is a
certain propriety in habiliment adapted to form, age, and degree, shall
be the purport of my next observations.




ON THE FEMALE FORM.

  “Who doth not feel, until his aching sight
  Faints into dimness with its own delight,
  His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess
  The might, the majesty of loveliness?”

  BYRON.


To preserve the health of the human form, is the first object of
consideration. This is of primary importance, for with its health we
necessarily maintain its symmetry, and improve its beauty.

The foundation of a just proportion, in all its parts, must be laid
in infancy; for, “as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.” A light
dress, which gives freedom to the functions of life and action, is
the best adapted to permit unobstructed growth; for thence the young
fibres, uninterrupted by obstacles of art, will shoot harmoniously
into the form which nature drew. The garb of childhood should in all
respects be easy; not to impede its movements by ligatures on the
chest, the loins, the legs, or the arms. By this liberty, we shall
see the muscles of the limbs gradually assume the fine swell and
insertions which only unconstrained exercise can produce. The shape
will sway gracefully on the firmly poised waist; the chest will rise
in noble and healthy expanse; and the human figure will start forward
at the blooming age of youth, maturing into the full perfection of
unsophisticated nature.

The lovely form of woman, in particular, thus educated, or rather thus
left to its natural bias, assumes a variety of interesting characters.
In one youthful figure, we see the lineaments of a wood-nymph; a form
slight and elastic in all its parts. The shape,

  “Small by degrees, and beautifully less,
  From the soft bosom to the tender waist!”

A foot light as that of her whose flying step scarcely brushed the
“unbending corn;” and limbs, whose agile grace moved in gay harmony
with the turns of her swan-like neck and sparkling eyes.

Another fair one appears with the chastened dignity of a vestal.
Her proportions are of a less aërial outline. As she draws near, we
perceive that the contour of her figure is on a broader and less
flexible scale than that of her more ethereal sister. Euphrosyne speaks
in the one, Melpomene in the other.

Between these two lies the whole range of female character in form;
and, in proportion as the figure approaches the one extreme or the
other, we call it grave or gay, majestic or graceful. Not but that
the same person may, by a happy combination of charms, unite these
qualities in different degrees, as we sometimes see graceful majesty
and majestic grace. Unless the commanding figure softens the amplitude
of its contour with a gentle elegance, it may possess a sort of regal
consequence, but it will be that of a heavy and harsh importance;
and, on the other hand, unless the slight and airy form, full of
youth and animal spirits, superadds to these attractions the grace of
a restraining dignity, her vivacity will be deemed levity, and her
activity the romping of a wild hoyden.

Young women, therefore, when they present themselves to the world, must
not implicitly fashion their demeanors according to the levelling rules
of the generality of school-governesses; but, considering the character
of their own figures, allow their deportment, and select their dress,
to follow and correct the bias of nature.

There is a class of female contour which bears such faint marks of any
positive character, that the best advice I can give to them who have
it, is to assume that of the sedate. Such an appearance is unobtrusive;
it is amiable, and not only secure from animadversion, but very likely
to awaken respect and love. Indeed, in all cases, a modest reserve is
essential to the perfection of feminine attraction.

As it has been observed, that, during the period of youth, different
women wear a variety of characters, such as the gay, the grave, &c.
when it is found that even this loveliest season of life places its
subjects in varying lights, how necessary does it seem that women
should carry this idea yet further by analogy, and recollect that she
has a summer as well as a spring, an autumn, and a winter! As the
aspect of the earth alters with the changes of the year, so does the
appearance of a woman adapt itself to the time which passes over her.
Like the rose, she buds, she blooms, she fades, she dies!

When the freshness of virgin youth vanishes--when Delia passes her
teens, and approaches her thirtieth year, she may then consider her
day as at the meridian; but the sun which shines so brightly on her
beauties, declines while it displays them. A few short years, and the
jocund step, the airy habit, the sportive manner, must all be exchanged
for “faltering steps and slow.” Before this happens, it would be well
for her to remember that it is wiser to throw a shadow over her yet
unimpaired charms, than to hold them in the light till they are seen to
decay.

Each age has an appropriate style of figure and pleasing; and it is
the business of discernment and taste to discover and maintain those
advantages in their due seasons.

The general characteristics of youth, are meek dignity, chastened
sportiveness, and gentle seriousness. Middle age has the privilege of
preserving, unaltered, the graceful majesty and tender gravity which
may have marked its earlier years. But the gay manners of the comic
muse must, in the advance of life, be discreetly softened down into
little more than cheerful amenity. Time marches on, and another change
takes place. Amiable as the former characteristics may be, they must
give way to the sober, the venerable aspect with which age, experience,
and “a soul commercing with the skies,” ought to adorn the silver hairs
of the Christian matron.

Nature having maintained a harmony between the figure of woman and
her years, it is decorous that the consistency should extend to
the materials and fashion of her apparel. For youth to dress like
age, is an instance of bad taste seldom seen. But age, affecting
the airy garments of youth, the transparent _drapery of Cos_, and
the sportiveness of a girl, is an anachronism as frequent as it is
ridiculous.

Virgin, bridal Beauty, when she arrays herself with taste, obeys an
end of her creation--that of increasing her charms in the eyes of some
virtuous lover, or the husband of her bosom. She is approved. But when
the wrinkled fair, the hoary-headed matron, attempts to equip herself
for conquest, to awaken sentiments which, when the bloom on her cheek
has disappeared, her rouge can never recall; and, despite of all her
efforts, we can perceive “_memento mori_” written on her face, then
we cannot but deride her folly, or, in pity, counsel her rather to
seek for charms, the mental graces of Madame de Sevigné, than the
meretricious arts of Ninon de l’Enclos.

But that, in some cases, wrinkles may be long warded off, and auburn
locks preserve a lengthened freshness, is not to be denied; and, where
nature prolongs the youth of a Helen or a Sarah, it is not for man
to see her otherwise. These are rare instances; and, in the minds of
rational women, ought rather to excite wonder, than desire to emulate
their extended reign. But what ought to be, we know is not always
adopted. St. Evremond has told us, that “a woman’s last sighs are for
her beauty;” and what this wit has advanced, the sex has ever been
too ready to confirm. A strange kind of art, a sort of sorcery, is
prescribed by tradition, and in books, in the form of cosmetics, &c.,
to preserve female charms in perpetual youth. But I fear that, until
these composts can be concocted in Medea’s caldron, they will never
have any better effect than exercising the faith and patience of the
credulous dupes, who expect to find the _elixir vitæ_ in any mixture
under heaven.

The rules which I would lay down for the preservation of the bloom of
beauty, during its natural life, are few, and easy of access. And,
besides having advantage of speaking from my own wide and minute
observation, I have the authorities of the most eminent physicians of
every age, to support my argument.

The secret of preserving beauty lies in three things,--temperance,
exercise, and cleanliness.--From these few heads, I hope much good
instruction may be deduced. _Temperance_ includes moderation at
table, and in the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasure. A young
beauty, were she fair as Hebe, and elegant as the Goddess of Love
herself, would soon lose these charms by a course of inordinate eating,
drinking, and late hours.

I guess that my delicate young readers will start at this last
sentence, and wonder how it can be that any well-bred woman should
think it possible that pretty ladies could be guilty of either of
the two first-mentioned excesses. But, when I speak of _inordinate_
eating, &c., I do not mean feasting like a glutton, or drinking to
intoxication. My objection is not more against the quantity than the
quality of the dishes which constitute the usual repast of women of
fashion. Their breakfasts not only set forth tea and coffee, but
chocolate, and _hot_ bread and butter. Both of these latter articles,
when taken constantly, are hostile to health and female delicacy.
The heated grease, which is their principal ingredient, deranges the
stomach; and, by creating or increasing bilious disorders, gradually
overspreads the fair skin with a wan or yellow hue. After this meal,
a long and exhausting fast not unfrequently succeeds, from ten in the
morning till six or seven in the evening, when dinner is served up;
and the half-famished beauty sits down to sate a keen appetite with
Cayenne soups, fish, French patées steaming with garlic, roast and
boiled meat, game, tarts, sweetmeats, ices, fruits, &c. &c. &c. How
must the constitution suffer under the digestion of this _melange_!
How does the heated complexion bear witness to the combustion within!
And, when we consider that the beverage she takes to dilute this mass
of food, and assuage the consequent fever in her stomach, is not merely
water from the spring, but champagne, madeira, and other wines, foreign
and domestic, you cannot wonder that I should warn the inexperienced
creature against intemperance. The superabundance of aliment which
she takes in at this time, is not only destructive of beauty, but the
period of such repletion is full of other dangers. Long fasting wastes
the powers of digestion, and weakens the springs of life. In this
enfeebled state, at the hour when nature intends we should prepare for
general repose, we put our stomach and animal spirits to extraordinary
exertion. Our vital functions are overtasked and overloaded;--we become
hectic--for observation strongly declares that invalid and delicate
persons should rarely eat solids after three o’clock in the day, as
fever is generally the consequence; and thus, almost every complaint
that distresses and destroys the human frame, may be engendered.

  “When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait
  Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain;
  For the keen appetite will feast beyond
  What nature well can bear; and one extreme
  Ne’er without danger meets its own reverse.”

Besides, when we add to this evil the present mode of bracing the
digestive part of the body, in what is called _long stays_, to what
an extent must reach the baneful effects of a protracted and abundant
repast? Indeed, I am fully persuaded that long fasting, late dining,
and the excessive repletion then taken into the exhausted stomach,
with the tight pressure of steel and whalebone on the most susceptible
parts of the frame then called into action, and the midnight, nay,
morning hours, of lingering pleasure, are the positive causes of colds
taken, bilious fevers, consumptions, and atrophies. By the means
enumerated, the firm texture of the constitution is broken, and the
principles of health being in a manner decomposed, the finest parts
fly off, and the dregs maintain the poor survivor of herself, in a sad
kind of artificial existence. Delicate proportion gives place either
to miserable leanness or shapeless fat. The once fair skin assumes a
pallid rigidity, or a bloated redness, which the vain possessor would
still regard as the roses of health and beauty.

To repair these ravages, comes the aid of padding, to give shape where
there is none; long stays, to compress into form the chaos of flesh;
and paints of all hues, to rectify the disorder of the complexion. But
useless are these attempts. If dissipation, disease, and immoderation,
have wrecked the fair vessel of female charms, it is not in the power
of Esculapius himself to refit the shattered bark; or of the Syrens,
with all their songs and wiles, to conjure its battered sides from the
rocks, and make it ride the seas in gallant trim again.

It is with pleasure that I turn from this ruin of all that is
beauteous and lovely, to the cheering hope of preserving every charm
unimpaired; and by means which the most ingenuous mind need not blush
to acknowledge.

The rules, I repeat, are few. First, _Temperance_: a well-timed use of
the table, and so moderate a pursuit of pleasure, that the midnight
ball, assembly, and theatre, shall not too frequently recur.

My next specific is that of gentle and daily _Exercise_ in the open
air. Nature teaches us, in the gambols and sportiveness of the young of
the lower animals, that bodily exertion is necessary for the growth,
vigor, and symmetry of the animal frame; while the too studious
scholar, and the indolent man of luxury, exhibit in themselves the
pernicious consequences of the want of exercise.

This may be almost always obtained, either on horseback or on foot,
in fine weather; and when that is denied, in a carriage. Country
air in the fields, or in gardens, when breathed at proper hours,
is an excellent bracer of the nerves, and a sure brightener of the
complexion. But these hours are neither under the mid-day sun in
summer, when its beams scorch the skin and ferment the blood; nor
beneath the dews of evening, when the imperceptible damps, saturating
the thinly-clad body, send the wanderer home infected with the disease
that is to lay her, ere a returning spring, in the silent tomb! Both
these periods are pregnant with danger to delicacy and carelessness.

The morning, about two or three hours after sunrise, is the most
salubrious time for a vigorous walk. But, as the day advances, if
you choose to prolong the sweet enjoyment of the open air, then the
thick wood or shady lane will afford refreshing shelter from the too
intense heat of the sun. In short, the morning and evening dew, and the
unrepelled blaze of a summer noon, must alike be ever avoided as the
enemies of health and beauty.

  “Fly, if you can, these violent extremes
  Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry.”

  ARMSTRONG.

_Cleanliness_, my last recipe, (and which is, like the others,
applicable to all ages,) is of most powerful efficacy. It maintains the
limbs in their pliancy, the skin in its softness, the complexion in
its lustre, the eyes in their brightness, the teeth in their purity,
and the constitution in its fairest vigor. To promote cleanliness, I
can recommend nothing preferable to bathing.

The frequent use of tepid baths is not more grateful to the sense than
it is salutary to the health, and to beauty. By such ablution, all
accidental corporeal impurities are thrown off; cutaneous obstructions
removed; and while the surface of the body is preserved in its original
brightness, many threatening disorders are removed or prevented. Colds
in the young, and rheumatic and paralytic affections in the old, are
all dispersed by this simple and delightful antidote. By such means the
women of the East render their skins softer than that of the tenderest
babes in this climate, and preserve that health which sedentary
confinement would otherwise destroy.

This delightful and delicate Oriental fashion is now, I am happy to
say, prevalent almost all over the continent. From the Villas of Italy,
to the Chateaux of France; from the Castles of Germany, to the Palaces
of Muscovy; we may everywhere find the marble bath under the vaulted
portico or the sheltering shade. Every house of every nobleman or
gentleman, in every nation under the sun, excepting Britain, possesses
one of those genial friends to cleanliness and comfort. The generality
of English ladies seem to be ignorant of the use of any bath larger
than a wash-hand basin. This is the more extraordinary to me, when I
contemplate the changeable temperature of the climate, and consider
the corresponding alterations in the bodily feelings of the people.
By abruptly checking the secretions, it produces those chronic and
cutaneous diseases so peculiar to our nation, and so heavy a cause of
complaint.

This very circumstance renders baths more necessary in England than
anywhere else; for as this is the climate most subject to sudden heats
and colds, rains and fogs, tepid immersion is the only sovereign remedy
against their usual morbific effects. Indeed, so impressed am I with
the consequence of their regimen, that I strongly recommend to every
lady to make a bath as indispensable an article in her house as a
looking-glass:

  “This is the purest exercise of health,
  The kind refresher of the summer heats;
  Even from the body’s purity, the mind
  Receives a secret sympathetic aid.”

It may be remarked, _en passant_, that rubbing of the skin in the bath
is an excellent substitute for _exercise_, when that is impracticable
out-of-doors.

I must not draw this chapter to a close without offering my fair
readers a few remarks on the malignant influence exercised on the
features by an ill-regulated temper. The face is the index of the mind.
On its expressive page are recorded in characters lasting as life
itself, the gloom of sullenness, the arrogance of pride, the withering
of envy, or the storm of anger; for, even after the fury of the tempest
has subsided, its fearful devastations remain behind.

  “From anger she may then be freed,
  But peevishness and spleen succeed.”

The first emotions of anger are apparent to the most superficial
observer. Every indulgence in its paroxysms, both adds strength to its
authority, and engraves its history in deeper relief on the forehead
of its votaries. What a pity it is that antiquity provides us with
no authentic portrait of the illustrious Xantippe! for I am sure the
features of that lady would lend their ready testimony to the value of
my admonitions.

When good-humor and vivacity reign within, the face is lighted up with
benignant smiles; where peace and gentleness are the tenants of the
bosom, the countenance beams with mildness and complacency. Evil temper
has, with truth, been called a more terrible enemy to beauty than the
small-pox. I beseech you, therefore, as you value the preservation of
your charms, to resist the dominion of this rude despoiler, to foster
and encourage the feelings of kindliness and good-humor, and to repress
every emotion of a contrary character.

I shall conclude this important subject by remarking with the
Spectator, that “no woman can be handsome by the force of features
alone, any more than she can be witty only by the gift of speech.”




THE SAME SUBJECT, OF FEMALE BEAUTY, MORE EXPLICITLY CONSIDERED.

  “Let Art no useless ornament display,
  But just explain what Nature meant to say.”

  YOUNG.


So far, my friends, I have thrown together my sentiments on the
aggregate of the female form: I shall now descend to particulars, and
leave it to your judgments to adopt my suggestions according to the
correspondence with your different characters.

The preservation of an agreeable complexion (which always presupposes
health) is not the most insignificant of exterior charms. Though we
yield due admiration to regularity of features, (the Grecian contour
being usually so called,) yet when we consider them merely in the
outline, our pleasure can go no further than that of a cold critic,
who regards the finely proportioned lineaments of life as he would
those of a statue. It is complexion that lends animation to a picture;
it is complexion that gives spirit to the human countenance. Even the
language of the eyes loses half its eloquence, if they speak from the
obscurity of an inexpressive skin. The life-blood in the mantling
cheek; the ever-varying hues of nature glowing in the face, “as if her
very body thought;” these are alike the ensigns of beauty and the
heralds of the mind; and the effect is, an impression of loveliness, an
attraction, which fills the beholder with answering animation and the
liveliest delight.

  “’Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call,
  But the joint force and full result of all.”

As a Juno-featured maid with a dull skin, by most people, will only be
coldly pronounced _critically_ handsome; so a young woman with very
indifferent features, but a fine complexion, will, from ten persons out
of twelve, receive spontaneous and warm admiration.

The experience (when once we admit the proposition that it is _right_
to keep the casket bright which contains so precious a gem as the soul)
must induce us to take precautions against the injuries continually
threatening the tender surface of the skin. It may be next to an
impossibility, to change the color of an eye, to alter the form of
the nose, or the turn of the mouth; but though Heaven has given us a
complexion which vies with the flowers of the field, we yet have it in
our power to render it dingy by neglect, coarse through intemperance,
and sallow by dissipation.

Such excesses must therefore be avoided; for, though there may be a
something in the pallid cheek which excites interest, yet, without a
certain appearance of health, there can never be an impression of
loveliness. A fine, clear skin, gives an assurance of the inherent
residence of three admirable graces to beauty; Wholesomeness, Neatness,
and Cheerfulness. Every fair means ought to be sought to maintain these
vouchers, for not only health of body, but health of mind.

I have already given some hints to this purpose; at least as far as
relates to the purity of the alimentary springs of sublunary life:
those which are in the heart, and point through time into eternity,
must not be less observed; for, unless its thoughts are kept in
corresponding order and the passions held in peace, all prescriptions
will be vain to keep those boiling fluids in check, which, in spite of
Roman fard and balm of Mecca, will spread themselves over the skin,
and there show an outward and visible sign of the malignant spirit
within. Independent of these intellectual causes of corporeal defects,
disorders of the skin, arising from accidental circumstances, are more
frequent in this country than in any other; and the fashions of the
day are still more inimical to the complexion of its inhabitants, than
the climate. The frequent and sudden changes from heat to cold, by
abruptly exciting or repressing the regular secretions of the skin,
roughen its texture, injure its hue, and often deform it with unseemly,
though transitory, eruptions. All this is increased by the habit ladies
have of exposing themselves unveiled, and frequently without bonnets,
in the open air. The head and face have then no defence against the
attacks of the surrounding atmosphere, and the effects are obvious.
The barouche, for this reason, and the more consequential one of
subjecting its inmates to dangerous chills, is a fatal addition to the
variety of English equipages. Our autumnal evenings, with this carriage
and our gossamer apparel, have already sent many of my young female
acquaintance to untimely graves.

To remedy these evils, I would strenuously recommend, for health’s
sake, as well as for beauty, that no lady should make one in any
riding, airing, or walking party, without putting on her head something
capable of affording both shelter and warmth. Shakspeare, the poet
of the finest taste in female charms, makes Viola regret having been
obliged to “throw her sun-expelling mask away!” Such a defence I do not
pretend to recommend; but I consider a veil a useful as well as elegant
part of dress; it can be worn to suit any situation; open or close,
just as the heat or cold may render it necessary.

The custom which some ladies have, when warm, of powdering their faces,
washing them with cold water, or throwing off their bonnets, that they
may cool the faster, are all very destructive habits. Each of them is
sufficient (when it meets with any predisposition in the blood) to
spread a surfeit over the skin, and make a once beautiful face hideous
forever.

The person, when overheated, should always be allowed to cool
gradually, and of itself, without any more violent assistant than,
perhaps, the gentle undulation of the neighboring air by a fan.
Streams of wind from opened doors and windows, or what is called
_a thorough air_, are all bad and highly dangerous applications.
These impatient remedies for heat are often resorted to in balls and
crowded assemblies; and as frequently as they are used, we hear of
sore throats, coughs, and fevers. While it is the fashion to fill a
drawing-room like a theatre, similar means ought to be adopted, to
prevent the ill effects of the consequent corrupted atmosphere, and the
temptation to seek relief by dangerous resources. Instead of the open
balcony, and yawning door, we should see ventilators in every window;
and thus feel a constant succession of pure and temperate air.

Excessive heat, as well as excessive cold, is apt to cause distempers
of the skin; and as the fine lady, by her strange habits, is as prone
to such changes as the desert-wandering gipsy, it is requisite that she
should be particularly careful to correct the deforming consequences of
her fashionable exposures. For her usual ablution, night and morning,
nothing is so fine an emollient for any rigidity or disease of the
face as a wash of French or white brandy, and rose-water; the spirit
making only one-third of the mixture. The brandy keeps up that gentle
action of the skin which is necessary to the healthy appearance of
its parts. It also cleanses the surface. The rose-water corrects the
drying property of the spirit, leaving the skin in a natural, soft, and
flexible state. Where white or French brandy cannot be obtained, half
the quantity of spirits of wine will tolerably supply its place.

The eloquent effect of complexion will, I hope, my fair friends, obtain
your pardon for my having confined your attention so long to what is
generally thought (though in contradiction to what is felt) a trifling
feature, if so I may be allowed to name it.

I am aware of your expectations, that I would give the precedence,
in this dissertation, to the eye. I subscribe to its supereminent
dignity; for none can deny that it is regarded by all nations as the
faithful interpreter of the mind, as the window of the soul, the index
in which we read each varied emotion of the heart; it is, indeed, the
“spirit’s throne of light.” But how increased an expression does this
intelligent feature convey, when aided by the glowing tints of an
eloquent complexion! Indeed, it is the happy coincidence of the eye and
the complexion which forms the strongest point of what the French call
_contenance_.

The animated changes of sensibility are nowhere more apparent than in
the transparent surface of a clear skin. Who has not perceived, and
admired, the rising blush of modesty enrich the cheek of a lovely girl,
and, in the sweet effusion, most gratefully discern the true witness
of the purity within? Who has not been sensible to the sudden glow on
the face, which announces, ere the lips open, or the eye sparkles, the
approach of some beloved object? Nay, will not even the sound of his
name paint the blooming cheek with deeper roses?

  “Who hath not owned, with rapture-smitten frame,
  The power of grace, the magic of a name?”

Shall we reverse the picture? I have shown how the soul proclaims her
joy through its wondrous medium; shall she speak her sorrows too? Then
let us call to mind, who have beheld the deadly paleness of her who
learns the unexpected destruction of her dearest possessions! Perhaps
a husband, a lover, or a brother, mingled with the slain, or fallen,
untimely, by some dreadful accident. Sudden partings like these

  “Press the life from out young hearts.”

We see the darkened, stagnant shade which denotes the despair-stricken
soul. We behold the livid hues of approaching frenzy, or the blacker
stain of settled melancholy! Heloisa’s face is paler than the marble
she kneels upon. In all cases the mind shines through the body; and
according as the medium is dense or transparent, so the light within
seems dull or clear.

Advocate as I am for a fine complexion, you must perceive, that it is
for the _real_, and not the _spurious_. The foundation of my argument,
_the skin’s power of expression_, would be entirely lost, were I to
tolerate that fictitious, that dead beauty, which is composed of white
paints and enamelling. In the first place, as all applications of
this kind are as a mask on the skin, they can never, but at a distant
glance, impose for a moment on a discerning eye. But why should I say
a _discerning eye_? No eye that is of the commonest apprehension can
look on a face bedaubed with white paint, pearl powder, or enamel, and
be deceived for a minute into a belief that so inanimate a “whited
wall” is the human skin. No flush of pleasure, no shudder of pain,
no thrilling of hope, can be descried beneath the encrusted mould;
all that passes within is concealed behind the mummy surface. Perhaps
the painted creature may be admired by an artist as a well-executed
picture; but no man will seriously consider her as a handsome woman.

White painting is, therefore, an ineffectual, as well as dangerous
practice. The proposed end is not obtained; and, as poison lurks under
every layer, the constitution wanes in alarming proportion as the
supposed charms increase.

What is said against white paint, does not oppose, with the same
force, the use of red. Merely rouging leaves three parts of the face,
and the whole of the neck and arms, to their natural hues. Hence, the
language of the heart, expressed by the general complexion, is not yet
entirely obstructed. Besides, while _all_ white paints are ruinous to
health, (occasioning paralytic affections, and premature death,) there
are some red paints which may be used with perfect safety.

A little vegetable rouge tinging the cheek of a delicate woman, who,
from ill health or an anxious mind, loses her roses, may be excusable;
and so transparent is the texture of such rouge, (when unadulterated
with lead,) that when the blood does mount to the face, it speaks
through the slight covering, and enhances the fading bloom. But, though
the occasional use of rouge may be tolerated, yet my fair friends must
understand that it is only _tolerated_. Good sense must so preside over
its application, that its tint on the cheek may always be fainter than
that nature’s pallet would have painted. A violent rouged woman is one
of the most disgusting objects to the eye. The excessive red on the
face gives a coarseness to every feature, and a general fierceness to
the countenance, which transforms the elegant lady of fashion into a
vulgar harridan.

While I recommend that the rouge we sparingly permit, should be laid on
with delicacy, my readers must not suppose that I intend such advice
as a means of making the art a deception. It seems to me so slight
and so innocent an apparel of the face, (a kind of decent veil thrown
over the cheek, rendered too eloquent of grief by the pallidness of
secret sorrow,) that I cannot see any shame in the most ingenuous
female acknowledging that she occasionally rouges. It is often, like a
cheerful smile on the face of an invalid, put on to give comfort to an
anxious friend.

That our applications to this restorer of our usual looks should not
feed, like a worm, on the bud it affects to brighten, no rouge must
ever be admitted that is impregnated with even the smallest particle
of ceruse. It is the lead which is the poison of white paint; and its
mixture with the red would render that equally noxious.

There are various ways of putting on rouge. Frenchwomen in general, and
those who imitate them, daub it on from the bottom of the side of the
face up to the very eye, even till it meets the lower eye-lash, and
creeps all over the temples. This is a hideous practice. It is obvious
that it must produce deformity instead of beauty, and, as I said
before, would metamorphose the gentlest-looking fair Hebe into a fierce
Medusa.

For brunettes, a slight touch of simple carmine on the cheek, in its
dry powder state, is amply sufficient. Taste will teach the hand to
soften the color by due degrees, till it almost imperceptibly blends
with the natural hue of the skin. For fairer complexions, letting down
the vivid red of the carmine with a mixture of fine hair powder, till
it suits the general appearance of the skin, will have the desired
effect.

The article of rouge, on the grounds I have mentioned, is the only
species of positive art a woman of integrity or of delicacy can permit
herself to use with her face. Her motives for imitating the bloom of
health, may be of the most honorable nature, and she can with candor
avow them. On the reverse, nothing but selfish vanity, and falsehood of
mind, could prevail on a woman to enamel her skin with white paints, to
lacker her lips with vermilion, to draw the meandering vein through the
fictitious alabaster with as fictitious a dye.

Penciling eye-brows, staining them, &c., are too clumsy tricks of
attempted deception, for any other emotion to be excited in the mind
of the beholder, than contempt for the bad taste and wilful blindness
which could ever deem them passable for a moment. There is a lovely
harmony in nature’s tints, which we seldom attain by our added
chromatics. The exquisitely fair complexion is generally accompanied
with blue eyes, light hair, and light eye-brows and lashes. So far
all is right. The delicacy of one feature is preserved in effect and
beauty by the corresponding softness of the other. A young creature,
so formed, appears to the eye of taste like the azure heavens, seen
through the fleecy clouds on which the brightness of day delights to
dwell. But take this fair image of the celestial regions, draw a black
line over her softly-tinctured eyes, stain their beamy fringes with a
sombre hue, and what do you produce? Certainly a fair face with _dark_
eye-brows! But that feature, which is an embellishment to a brunette,
when seen on the forehead of the fair beauty, becomes, if not an
absolute deformity, so great a drawback from her perfections, that the
harmony is gone; and, as a proof, a painter would immediately turn from
the change with disgust.

Nature, in almost every case, is our best guide. Hence the native
color of our own hair is, in general, better adapted to our own
complexions than a wig of a contrary hue. A thing may be beautiful in
itself, which, with certain combinations, may be rendered hideous. For
instance, a golden-tressed wig on the head of a brown woman, makes
both ridiculous. By the same rule, all fantastic tricks played with
the mouth or eyes, or motions of the head, are absurd, and ruinous to
beauty. They are solecisms in the works of nature.

In Turkey, it happened to be the taste of one of its great monarchs,
to esteem large and dark-lashed eyes as the most lovely. From that
time, all the fair slaves of that voluptuous region, when nature has
not bestowed “the wild-stag eye in sable ringlets rolling,” supply the
deficiency with circles of antimony; and so, instead of a real charm,
they impart a strange artificial ghastliness to their appearance.

Our countrywomen, in like manner, when a celebrated _belle_ came under
the pencil of Sir Peter Lely, who exhibited to her emulative rivals
the sweet peculiarities of her long and languishing eye, they must
needs all have the same; and not a lady could appear in public, be her
visual orbs large or small, bright or dull, but she must affect the
soft sleepiness, the tender and slowly-moving roll of her subduing
exemplar. But though Sir Peter’s gallant pencil deigned to compliment
his numerous sitters by drowning their strained aspects after the model
of the peerless _belle_, yet, in place of the nature-stamped look of
modest languishment, he could not but often recognize the disgraceful
leer and hideous squint. Let every woman be content to leave her eyes
as she found them, and to make that use of them which was their design.
They were intended to see with, and artlessly express the feelings of
a chaste and benevolent heart. Let them speak this unsophisticated
language, and beauty will beam from the orb which affectation would
have rendered odious.

Analogy of reasoning will bring forward similar remarks with regard to
the movements of the mouth, which many ladies use, not to speak with or
to admit food, but to show dimples and display white teeth. Wherever
a desire for exhibition is discovered, a disposition to disapprove
and ridicule arises in the spectator. The pretensions of the vain are
a sort of assumption over others, which arms the whole world against
them. But, after all, “What are the honors of a painted skin?” I hope
it will be distinctly understood by my fair friends, that I do not, by
any means, give a general license to painting; on the contrary, that
even rouge should only be resorted to in cases of absolute necessity.




GENERAL THOUGHTS ON DRESS AND PERSONAL DECORATION.

  “Costly your habit as your purse can buy,
  But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy,
  For the apparel oft proclaims the woman.”

  SHAKSPEARE.


Every person of just observation, who looks back on the fashions of our
immediate ancestors, and compares their style of dress with that of the
present times, will not hesitate to acknowledge the evident improvement
in ease and gracefulness. When I say this, I mean to eulogize the taste
which yet prevails with persons of real judgment, to maintain the _ease
and gracefulness_ of our assumed Grecian mode, against a new race of
stay-makers, corset-inventors, &c., who have just armed themselves with
whalebone, steel, and buckram, to the utter destruction of all the
naturally-elegant shapes which fall into their hands.

Just before this attempted counter-revolution in the world of fashion,
we found that our _belles_ had gradually exploded the stiffness and
formality which distinguished the brocaded dame of 1700, from the
lawn-robed fair of the nineteenth century. In former ages it seemed
requisite that every lady should cut out her garments by a certain
erected standard. All seemed in a livery. One mode for gown, cap,
and hat prevailed; and though the materials might be more costly in
one than another, the outline was the same; and thus peculiar taste
and fine form were lost, in the general prescription of one reigning
costume.

But in our days, an Englishwoman has the extensive privilege of
arraying herself in whatever garb may best suit her figure or her
fancy. The fashions of every nation and of every era are open to her
choice. One day she may appear as the Egyptian Cleopatra, then a
Grecian Helen; next morning, the Roman Cornelia; or, if these styles be
too august for her taste, there are sylphs, goddesses, nymphs of every
region, in earth or air, ready to lend her their wardrobe. In short, no
land or age is permitted to withhold its costume from the adoption of
an Englishwoman of fashion.

  “Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
  The various offsprings of the world appear;
  This casket India’s glowing gems unlocks,
  And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.”

With such a variety to choose from, she has no excuse, if she unite
not the excellences of them all. It was so that the sculptor of Paphos
formed the “beauteous statue that enchanted the world.” And in like
manner female taste accomplishes its object. A judicious dresser will
select from each mode that which is most distinguishable for utility
and grace, and, combining, adopt them to advantage. This is the art
which every woman who casts a thought on these subjects, ought to
endeavor to attain.

Elegant dressing is not found in expense; money without judgment may
load, but never can adorn. You may show profusion without grace: You
may cover a neck with pearls, a head with jewels, hands and arms with
rings, bracelets, and trinkets, and yet produce no effect, but having
emptied some merchant’s counter upon your person. The best chosen dress
is that which so harmonizes with the figure as to make the raiment
pass unobserved. The result of the finest toilet should be an _elegant
woman_, not an elegantly dressed woman. Where a perfect whole is
intended, it is a sign of defect in the execution, when the details
first present themselves to observation.

In short, the secret of dressing lies in simplicity, and a certain
adaptation to your figure, your rank, your circumstances. To dress
well on these principles--and they are the only just ones--does not
require that extravagant attention to so trivial an object, as is
usually exhibited by persons who make the toilet a study. When ladies
place the spell of their attraction in their clothes, we generally
see them arrayed in robes of a thousand makes and dyes, and curiously
constructed of materials brought from, Heaven knows where. Thus, much
time, thought, and wealth, are wasted on a comparatively worthless
object. To lavish many of the precious hours of life in the invention
and arrangement of dress, is as criminal an offence as to exhaust the
finances of your husband or parents by a thriftless expenditure on its
component parts.

The taste I wish to inculcate, is that nicely-poised estimation of
things, which shows it “worth our while to do _well_, what it is ever
worth our while _to do_.” This disposition originates in a correct and
delicate mind, and forms a judgment which makes elegance inseparable
from propriety; and extending itself from great objects to small,
reaches the most apparently insignificant; and thus, even in the change
of the morning and evening attire, displays to the considerate observer
a very intelligible index of the wearer’s well-regulated mind.

“Show me a lady’s dressing-room,” says a certain writer, “and I will
tell you what manner of woman she is.” Chesterfield, also, is of
opinion, that a sympathy goes through every action of our lives: he
declares, that he could not help conceiving some idea of people’s sense
and character from the dress in which they appeared when introduced
to him. He was so great an advocate for pleasing externals, that he
often said, he would rather see a young person too much than too
little dressed, excess, on the fopish side, wearing off with time and
reflection; but if a youth be negligent at twenty, it is probable he
will be a sloven at forty, and disgustingly dirty at fifty. However
this may be with the other sex, I beg leave to observe, that I never
yet met with a woman whose general style of dress was chaste, elegant,
and appropriate, that I did not find, on further acquaintance, to be,
in disposition and mind, an object to admire and love.

This correspondence between the thoughts and the raiment being
established, what was before insignificant becomes of consequence;
and, being rightly understood, good sense will be as careful not to
disparage her discretion, by extravagant dress, as she would to evince
a sordid mind, by dirt and rags.

I think I see you, my friends, smile, incredulous, at the last
sentence. What gentlewoman, you exclaim, who is above the most abject
pecuniary embarrassments, can ever have chance of being so apparelled?
A desire of singularity is a sufficient answer. There is a race of
women, who, priding themselves on their superior rank, or wealth, or
talents, affect to despise what they deem the adventitious aids of
dress. Their appearance, in consequence, is frequently as ridiculous
as disgusting. When this folly is seen in female authors, or what
is much the same thing, ladies professing a particularly literary
taste, we can at once trace its motives,--a conceited negligence of
outward attractions, and a determination to raise themselves in the
opinions of men, by displaying a contempt for what they deem the vain
occupations of meaner souls. Wishing to be thought superior to founding
any regard on external ornament, they forget external decency; and by
slatternliness and affectation, render what is called a learned woman,
a kind of scare-crow to her own sex, and a laughing-stock to the other.
This error is not so common now with bookish ladies as it was in the
beginning of the last century. Then our sex did, indeed, show that “a
little learning is a dangerous thing.” They did not imbibe sufficient
to imbue them with a sense of its real properties, to show them causes
and effects, to make them understand themselves, and close the book in
humility. They, poor short-sighted creatures! exchanged the innocent
ignorance of Eve for the empoisoned apple, which, under the cheat of
displaying knowledge, fills the eater with a vain self-conceit, while
it more openly exposes her mental nakedness to every eye.

The absurdity of their deductions is so obvious, that one wonders how
any woman could fall into such an error. Who among them but would think
it the height of folly to place over the door of a museum, to which
the proprietor wished to attract visitors, the effigy of a monster, so
disgusting as to deter men from entering to see what might otherwise
have afforded them much pleasure? Such effigies might the slip-shod
muses of the days of Anne have given of themselves; but most of the
modern female votaries of Minerva, aware of the advantages of a
prepossessing appearance, mingle with their incense to the Goddess a
few flowers to the Paphian Graces; and, that they gain by the devotion,
none who have been admitted to the acquaintance of our British Sapphos
and Corinnas, can deny.

There is another class of persons, who neglect their exterior on
account of the consequence they derive from their rank; but instances
on such a plea are few, in comparison with the insolent slovenliness of
the opposite sex, when, springing from the lower degrees in society,
they amass or acquire large fortunes. They aim at notoriety; and common
means, such as expense and show, not raising them into an _eclat_
beyond their equally rich contemporaries, ambition leads them to seek
notice by the assumption of a garb of almost pauper negligence. I
remember, some years since, when on a visit at a large seaport town
in the north of England, to have been attracted by seeing at the door
of a handsome house in one of the principal streets an elegant modern
chariot. I stopped, and, to my surprise, saw step into it an old man
of the meanest and most dirty appearance. A few days afterwards, while
viewing the docks with a gentleman who was an inhabitant of the place,
I observed the same wretched-looking person conversing familiarly
with a man of the first consequence in the town. I inquired of my
friend the name and business of the shabby old fellow, and received
the following brief answer. He had been taken, when a boy, from very
indigent parents residing in a northern village; and, being a smart
lad, was employed in the drudgery of a banking-house belonging to his
benefactors. By assiduous application, and a deep cunning, aided by
what is vulgarly called _good luck_, he gradually advanced himself to
be one of the firm. Of course, his fortune then rose with the house,
and his wealth, at the time I saw him, was computed at upwards of a
hundred thousand pounds. Yet I am sure that an old-clothesman would not
have given half-a-crown for the whole of the apparel (or rather rags)
upon his back.

Now, as it is too often the custom with people, in forming an opinion,
seldom to go beyond the surface, this modern AVARO was, by many, termed
_a man without pride_! Few gave a guess at the real motive of all this
studied negligence; but those who investigate the human character,
and trace actions to the secret springs of the heart, saw, in this
inattention to personal decency, the very acmé of personal pride. I
shall prove my position by repeating the usual reply of this old man,
when any of his acquaintance ventured to inquire why he wore such
tattered garments. “Why,” he would answer, “were I to dress as smart as
other people, no one would know T. W. from another man.”

Men may fall into this mistaken road to distinction, but women who have
suddenly become wealthy seldom do. A passion for dress is so common
with the sex, that it ought not to be very surprising, when opulence,
vanity, and bad taste meet, that we should find extravagance and tawdry
profusion the fruits of the union. And it would be well if a humor for
expensive dress were always confined to the fortunate daughters of
Plutus; but we too often find this ruinous spirit in women of slender
means, and then, what ought to be one of the embellishments of life
is turned into a splendid mischief. Alas! my friends, it must come
under your own observations, that often does the foolish virgin, or
infatuated matron, sell her peace or honor for a ring or a scarf!

A woman of principle and prudence must be consistent in the style and
quality of her attire; she must be careful that her expenditure does
not exceed the limits of her allowance; she must be aware, that it
is not the girl who lavishes the most money on her apparel that is
the best arrayed. Frequent instances have I known, where young women,
with a little good taste, ingenuity, and economy, have maintained
a much better appearance than ladies of three times their fortune.
No treasury is large enough to supply indiscriminate profusion; and
scarcely any purse is too scanty for the uses of life, when managed
by a careful hand. Few are the situations in which a woman can be
placed, whether she be married or single, where some attention to
thrift is not expected. High rank requires adequate means to support
its consequence--ostentatious wealth, a superabundance to maintain
its domineering pretensions; and the middle class, when virtue is its
companion, looks to economy to allow it to throw its mite into the lap
of charity.

Hence we see, that hardly any woman, however related, can have a right
to independent, uncontrolled expenditure; and that, to do her duty in
every sense of the word, she must learn to understand and exercise the
graces of economy. This quality will be a gem in her husband’s eyes;
for, though most of the money-getting sex like to see their wives well
dressed, yet, trust me, my fair friends, they would rather owe that
pleasure to your taste than to their pockets!

Costliness being, then, no essential principle in real elegance, I
shall proceed to give you a few hints on what are the distinguishing
circumstances of a well-ordered toilet.

As the beauty of form and complexion is different in different women,
and is still more varied, according to the ages of the fair subjects of
investigation; so the styles in dress, while simplicity is the soul of
all, must assume a character corresponding with the wearer.

The seasons of life should be arrayed like those of the year. In
the spring of youth, when all is lovely and gay, then, as the soft
green, sparkling in freshness, bedecks the earth; so, light and
transparent robes, of tender colors, should adorn the limbs of the
young beauty. If she be of the Hebe form, warm weather should find her
veiled in fine muslin, lawn, gauzes, and other lucid materials. To
suit the character of her figure, and to accord with the prevailing
mode and just taste together, her morning robes should be of a length
sufficiently circumscribed as not to impede her walking; but on no
account must they be too short; for, when any design is betrayed of
showing the foot or ankle, the idea of beauty is lost in that of the
wearer’s odious indelicacy. On the reverse, when no show of vanity is
apparent in the dress--when the lightly-flowing drapery, by unsought
accident, discovers the pretty buskined foot or taper ankle, a sense of
virgin timidity, and of exquisite loveliness together, strikes upon the
senses; and Admiration, with a tender sigh, softly whispers, “The most
resistless charm is modesty!”

In Thomson’s exquisite portrait of Lavinia, the prominent feature is
modesty. “She was beauty’s self,” indeed, but-then she was “thoughtless
of beauty;” and though her eyes were sparkling, “bashful modesty”
directed them

    “Still on the ground dejected, darting all
  Their humid beams into the blooming flowers.”

The morning robe should cover the arms and the bosom, nay even the
neck. And if it be made tight to the shape, every symmetrical line is
discovered with a grace so decent, that vestals, without a blush, might
adopt the chaste apparel. This simple garb leaves to beauty all her
empire; no furbelows, no heavy ornaments, load the figure, warp the
outlines, and distract the attention. All is light, easy, and elegant;
and the lovely wearer, “with her glossy ringlets loosely bound,” moves
with the Zephyrs on the airy wing of youth and innocence.

Her summer evening dress may be of a still more gossamer texture;
but it must still preserve the same simplicity, though its
gracefully-diverging folds may fall like the mantle of Juno, in
clustering drapery about her steps. There they should meet the white
slipper

                      “--of the fairy foot,
  Which shines like snow, and falls on earth as mute.”

In this dress, her arms, and part of her neck and bosom may be
unveiled; but only _part_. The eye of maternal decorum should draw the
virgin zone to the limit where modesty would bid it rest.

Where beauty is, ornaments are unnecessary; and where it is not, they
are unavailing. But as gems and flowers are handsome in themselves, and
when tastefully disposed doubly so, a beautiful young woman, if she
chooses to share her empire with the jeweller and the florist, may,
not inelegantly, decorate her neck, arms, and head, with a string of
pearls, and a band of flowers.

Female youth, of airy forms and fair complexions, ought to reject, as
too heavy for their style of figure, the use of gems. Their ornaments
should hardly ever exceed the natural or imitated flowers of the
most delicate tribes. The snow-drop, lily of the valley, violet,
primrose, myrtle, Provence rose,--these and their resemblances, are
embellishments which harmonize with their gaiety and blooming years.
The colors of their garments, when not white, should be the most tender
shades of green, yellow, pink, blue, and lilac. These when judiciously
selected, or mingled, array the graceful wearer, like another Iris,
breathing youth and loveliness.

Should a young woman, of majestic character, inquire for appropriate
apparel, she will find it to correspond with her graver and more
dignified mien. Her robes should always be long and flowing, and more
ample in their folds than those of her gayer sister. Their substance
should also be thicker, and of a soberer color. White is becoming to
all characters, and not less so to Juno than to Venus; but when colors
are to be worn, I recommend to the lady of majestic deportment, to
choose the fuller shades of yellow, purple, crimson, scarlet, black,
and gray. The materials of her dress in summer, cambrics, muslins,
sarcenets; in winter, satins, velvets, broadcloth, &c. Her ornaments
should be embroidery of gold, silver, and precious stones, with fillets
and diadems of jewels, and waving plumes.

The materials for the winter dresses of majestic forms, and
lightly-graceful ones, may be of nearly similar texture, only
differing, when made up, in amplitude and abundance of drapery. Satin,
Genoa velvet, Indian silks, and kerseymere, may all be fashioned
into as becoming an apparel for the slender figure as for the more
_embonpoint_; and the warmth they afford is highly needful to preserve
health during the cold and damps of winter. When it is so universally
acknowledged, the indispensable necessity of keeping the body in a just
temperature between heat and cold, I cannot but be astonished at the
little attention that is paid to so momentous a subject by the people
of this climate. I wonder that a sense of personal comfort, aided by
the well-founded conviction that health is the only preservative of
beauty, and lengthener of youth, that it does not impel women to prefer
utility before the absurd whims of an unreasonable fashion.

To wear gossamer dresses, with bare necks and naked arms, in a hard
frost, has been the mode in this country, and unless a principle is
made against it, may be so again, to the utter wretchedness of them,
who, so arraying their youth, lay themselves open to the untimely
ravages of rheumatisms, palsies, consumptions, and death.

While fine taste, as well as fashion, decrees that the beautiful
outline of a well-proportioned form shall be seen in the contour of
a nicely-adapted dress, the divisions of that dress must be few and
simple. But, though the hoop and quilted petticoat are no longer
suffered to shroud in hideous obscurity one of the loveliest works in
nature, yet all intermediate covering is not to be banished. Modesty,
on one hand, and Health, on the other, still maintain the law of “fold
on fold.”

Some of our fair dames appear, summer and winter, with no other shelter
from sun or frost, than one single garment of muslin or silk over their
chemise--_if they wear one!_ but that is often dubious. The indelicacy
of this mode need not be pointed out; and yet, O shame! it is most
generally followed. However, common as the crime is, (for who will say
that it is not a sin against modesty?) it is quickly visited with its
punishment. It loses its aim, if it hopes to attract the admiration of
manly worth. No eye but that of a libertine can look upon so wanton a
figure with any other sensations than those of disgust and contempt:
and the end of all her arts being lost, the certainty of an early old
age, chronic pains, and deeply-furrowed wrinkles, is thus incurred in
vain.

No woman, even in the warmest flush of youth, ought to be prodigal of
her charms; she should not “unmask her beauties to the moon;” or unduly
expose the vital fluid, which animates her frame with life and joy. A
momentary blast from the east may pierce her filmy robes, wither her
bloom, and lay her low.

The _Chemise_ (now too frequently banished) ought to be held as sacred
by the modest fair as the vestal veil. No fashion should be able to
strip her of that decent covering; in short, woman should consider it
as the sign of her delicacy, as the pledge of honor to shelter her from
the gaze of unhallowed eyes.

This indispensable vesture being once more appropriated to its ancient
use, we shall next speak of the stays, or _corsets_. They must be light
and flexible, yielding to the shape, while they support it. In warm
weather, my fair reader should wear under her gown and slip a light
cotton petticoat; these few habiliments are sufficient to impart the
softening line of modesty to the defined outline of the form. Health,
also, is preserved by their opposing the immediate influence of the
atmosphere; and none will deny, that enough of female charms are thus
displayed, to gratify the quick, discerning eye of taste.

During the chilling airs of spring and autumn, the cotton petticoat
should give place to fine flannel; and in the rigid season of winter,
another addition must be made, by rendering the outer garments warmer
in their original texture: for instance, substituting satins, velvets,
and rich stuffs, for the lighter materials of summer. And besides
these, the use of fur is not only a salutary, but a magnificent and
graceful appendage to dress.

Having laid it down as a general principle, that the fashion of the
raiment must correspond with that of the figure, and that every sort
of woman will not look equally well in the same style of apparel, it
will not be difficult to make you understand, that a handsome person
may make a freer use of fancy in her ornaments than an ordinary one.
Beauty gives effect to all things; it is the universal embellisher,
the setting which makes common crystal shine as diamonds. In short,
fashion does not adorn beauty, but beauty fashion. Hence, I must warn
Delia, that if she be not cast in so perfect a mould as Celia, she
must not flatter herself that she can supply the deficiency by gayer
or more sumptuous attire. Whims in dress may possibly pass with her,
who, “in Parsian mode, or Indian guise, is still the fairest fair!”
But caprices of this sort, in a plain woman, only render her defects
more conspicuous; and she, who might have been regarded as a very
pleasing girl, in an unobtrusive robe of simple elegance, is ridiculed
and despised when descried in the inappropriate plumage of fancy and
decoration.

Many men, while listening to the conversation of an ordinary, but
sensible young woman, would never see that her hair was harsh, and of
a bad color, were it not interwoven with a wreath of roses. They would
not perceive the brownness and want of symmetry in her bosom, did not
the sparkling necklace attract their eye to the spot. Neither would
it strike them that her hands were coarse and red, did not the pearl
bracelets and circles of rings tell them that she meant they should vie
with Celia’s rose-tipped fingers.

As I recommend a restrained and quiet mode of dress to plain women,
so, in gradation as the lovely of my sex advance towards the vale of
years, I counsel them to assume a graver habit and a less vivacious
air. Cheerfulness is becoming to all times of life, but sportiveness
belongs to youth alone; and when the meridian or the decline of our
days affects it, is ever heavy and out of place.

Let me show you, my fair friends, by conducting you into the Pantheon
of ancient Rome, the images of yourselves at the different stages of
your lives. First, behold that lovely Hebe; her robes are like the
air, her motion is on the zephyr’s wing: that you may be till you are
twenty. Then comes the beautiful Diana. The chaste dignity of the pure
intelligence within pervades the whole form, and the very drapery which
enfolds it harmonizes with the modest elegance, the buoyant health,
which gives elasticity and grace to every limb: here, then, you see
yourselves from twenty to thirty. At that majestic age, when the woman
of mind looks round upon the world; back on the events which have past,
and calmly forward to those which may be to come; all within ought
to be settled on the firm basis of religion and sound judgment; and
either as a Juno or a Minerva she stands forth in the power of beauty
and of wisdom. At this period she lays aside the flowers of youth, and
arrays herself in the majesty of sobriety, or in the grandeur of simple
magnificence.

Contradictory as the two last terms may at first appear, they are
consistent; and a glance on the works of Phidias, and of his best
imitators, will sufficiently prove their beautiful union. Long is the
reign of this commanding epoch of a woman’s age; for from thirty to
fifty she may most respectably maintain her station on this throne
of matron excellence. But at that period, when she has numbered half
a century, then it becomes her to throw aside “the wimple and the
crisping-iron, the ornament of silver, and the ornament of gold,” and
gracefully acknowledging her entrance into the vale of years, to wrap
herself in her mantle of gray, and move gently down till she passes
through its extremest bourn to the mansions of immortality.

Ah! who is there amongst us, who, having once viewed the reality of
this picture, would exchange such blessed relinquishment of the world
and all its vanities, for the bolstered back, enamelled cheek, and
be-wigged head of a modern old woman, just trembling on the verge of
the grave, and yet a candidate for the flattery of men?

It has been most wisely said, (and it would be well if the waning
queens of beauty would adopt the reflection,) that there is a _time_
for _everything_! We may add, that there is a time to be young, a time
to be old; a time to be loved, a time to be revered; a time to seek
life, and a time to be ready to lay it down.

She who best knows how to fashion herself to these inevitable changes
is the only truly, only lastingly fair. Her beauty is in the mind,
and shown in action; and when men cease to admire the woman, they do
better, they revere the saint.




ON THE PECULIARITIES OF DRESS, WITH REFERENCE TO THE STATION OF THE
WEARER.

            “Dress drains our cellar dry,
  And keeps our larder lean; puts out our fires,
  And introduces hunger, frost, and wo,
  Where peace and hospitality might reign.”

  COWPER.


As there is a propriety in adapting your dress to the different seasons
of your life, and the peculiar character of your figure, there is
likewise a necessity that it should correspond with the station you
hold in society.

This is a subject not less of a moral concern than it is a matter of
taste. By the universality of finery, and expensive articles in dress,
ranks are not only rendered undistinguishable, but the fortunes of
moderate families, and of industrious tradesmen, are brought to ruin:
the sons become sharpers, and the virtue of the wives and daughters too
often follows in the same destruction.

It is not from a proud wish to confine elegance to persons of quality,
that I contend for less extravagant habits in the middle and lower
orders of people; it is a conviction of the evil which their vanity
produces, that impels me to condemn _in toto_ the present levelling and
expensive mode.

A tradesman’s wife is now as sumptuously arrayed as a countess; and
a waiting-maid as gaily as her lady. I speak not of our merchants,
who, like those of Florence under the Medici family, have the fortunes
of princes, and may therefore decorate the fair partners of their
lives with the rich produce of the divers countries they visit; but I
animadvert on our retail shopkeepers, our linen-drapers, upholsterers,
&c. who, not content with gold and silver baubles, trick out their
dames in jewels! No wonder that these men load their consciences with
dishonest profits, or make their last appearance in the newspaper as
insolvent or _felo de se_!

Should the woman of moderate fortune be so ignorant of the principles
of real elegance as to sigh for the splendid apparels of the court, let
her receive as an undeniable truth, that mediocrity of circumstances
being able to afford clean and simple raiment, furnishes all that
is essential for taste to improve into perfect elegance. Riches and
splendor will attract notice, and may often excite admiration; but it
is the privilege of propriety and sweet retiring grace alone to rivet
the eye, and take captive the heart.

  “Many there are who seem to shun all care,
  And with a pleasing negligence ensnare.”

The fashion of educating all ranks of young women alike, is the cause
why all ranks of women attempt to dress alike. If the brazier’s
daughter is taught to sing, dance, and play, like the heiress to an
earldom, we must not be surprised that she will also emulate the
decorations of her rival. We see her imitate the coronet on Lady Mary’s
brows; and though Miss Molly may possibly not be able to have her’s of
gems, foil-stones produce a similar effect; then she looks for rings,
bracelets, armlets, to give appropriate grace to the elegant arts she
has learnt to practise; and when she is thus arrayed, she plays away
the wanton and the fool, till some libertine of fortune buys her either
for a wife or a mistress.

Were girls of the plebeian classes brought up in the praiseworthy
habits of domestic duties; had they learned how to manage a house, how
to economize and produce comfort at the least expense at their father’s
frugal yet hospitable table, we should not hear of dancing-masters,
and music-masters, of French and Italian masters; they would have no
time for them. We should not see gaudy robes and glittering trinkets
dangling behind the counter, or shining at a Sunday ordinary; we should
not be told of the seduction, or ruin of those,

  “Whose modest looks the cottage might adorn,
  Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.”

The appearance of these young women would not attract the flatterer;
and their simple hearts know not the desires of luxury and vanity.

After having drawn this agreeable picture of her who has well chosen,
I will leave this modern daughter of industry to her discreet and
virtuous simplicity; and once more turn to her whose fortune and
station render greater change and expense in apparel not only
admissible but commendable. A woman with adequate means, when she fills
an extensive wardrobe, encourages the arts and manufactures of her
country, and replenishes the scanty purse of many a laborious family.

At this period of universal talent, articles of dress may be purchased
at a price so insignificant as hardly to be named, or at the vast cost
of half a fortune. A pretty muslin gown may be bought by the village
girl for a few shillings; while a robe of the same material, but of a
finer quality, cannot be purchased by a lady of rank for less than as
many guineas. Indian muslin wrought with gold or silver is nearly as
costly as the stately brocades of our ancestors, but it is infinitely
more elegant.

Indeed, when we look back upon their heavy fashions, we cannot but
see, that in almost every respect the advantage of the change is on
our side. With the stiffness of cloth of gold and embroidered tissues,
have also disappeared the enormous pile of hair, furbelows, feathers,
diamond towers, windmills, &c. which a certain witty poet used to
denominate “the building of the head.” Now, easy tresses, the shining
braid, the flowing ringlet confined by the _antique_ comb, or bodkin,
give graceful specimens of the simple taste of modern beauty. Nothing
can correspond more elegantly with the untrammelled drapery of our
newly-adopted classic raiment than this undecorated coiffure of nature.

While we find that the pious Bishop Latimer remonstrated with the
females of his time against the monstrous superfluity of their
“roundabouts, artificial hips,” &c. &c. and recommended to their use
the “honest _single_ garment;”--our moralists, equally pious, take up
the argument on the contrary side, and justly condemn the too adhesive
and transparent robe worn by our contemporary belles! On this subject
we must dissent from the venerable reformer of the sixteenth century;
and agree with those of the nineteenth, that the _single garment_ (as
the texture now usually is) is not a meet covering for a christian
damsel.

I am sorry to be obliged to call to your observation, my gentle
friends, that the modern fair have deviated widely from that medium
between the Bacchante and the Vestal, which a discreet candidate
for admiration would wish to preserve. The nature of man is prone
to extremes; and flying from the heavy farthingale and the stuffed
petticoat, women assume almost the Spartan guise; and, not meeting
minds in the opposite sex as pure as those in Lacedæmon, no wonder that
the chaste matron, called upon to foretell the consequence, should
remain silent, and veil her head.

“Good sense,” says La Rochefoucault, “should be the test of all rule,
whether ancient or modern. Whatever is incompatible with good sense
must be false.” Modesty should, on the same principle, be the test of
the propriety of all personal apparel or ornament; for whatever is
incompatible with her ordinances, must degrade and betray.

Hence you will perceive, my young readers, that in no case a true
friend or lover would wish you to discover to the eye more of the
“form divine” than can be indistinctly descried through the mysterious
involvements of, at least, three successive folds of drapery. Love,
friendship, and real taste, are alike delicate.

To the exposure of the bosom and back, as some ladies display those
parts of their person, what shall we say? This mode (like every other
which is carried to excess and indiscriminately followed) is not only
repugnant to decency, but most exceedingly disadvantageous to the
charms of nine women out of ten. The bosom and shoulders of a very
young and fair girl may be displayed without exciting much displeasure
or disgust; the beholder regards the too prodigal exhibition, not as
the act of the youthful innocent, but as the effect of accident, or
perhaps the designed exposure of some ignorant dresser. But when a
woman, grown to the age of discretion, of her own choice “unveils her
beauties to the sun and moon,” then, from even an Helen’s charms the
sated eye turns away loathing.

Were we even in a frantic and impious passion to set virtue aside,
policy should direct our damsels to be more sparing of their
attractions. An unrestrained indulgence of the eye robs imagination of
her power, and prevents her consequent influence on the heart. And if
this be the case where real beauty is exposed, how much more subversive
of its aim must be the studied display of an ordinary or deformed
figure!

Judgment, as well as decency, declares, that it is sufficient in the
evening and full-dress to disrobe the back of the neck to the top of
the delicate undulation on the rise of the shoulder. Women, according
to the fineness of their skins and proportions, must accept or decline
the privileges which modesty grants. It is preposterous for her who
is of a brown, dingy, or speckled complexion, to disarray her neck
and arms, as her fairer rival may. A clear brunette has as much
liberty in this respect as the fairest; but not so the muddy-skinned
and ill-formed. A candid consideration of our pretensions on these
subjects, and an impartial judgment, must decide our style of apparel,
and consequently our respectability with the discerning.

Perhaps it is necessary to remind my reader that custom regulates the
veiling or unveiling the figure, according to different periods in the
day. In the morning, the arms and bosom must be completely covered to
the throat and wrists. From the dinner-hour to the termination of the
day, the arms, to a graceful height above the elbow, may be bare; and
the neck and shoulders unveiled as far as delicacy will allow.

As Cicero said of _action_, so say ye of the essentials of your
charms. What is the eloquence of your beauty?--Modesty! What is its
first argument?--Modesty! What is its second?--Modesty! What is its
third?--Modesty!--What is its peroration, the winding up of all
its charms, the striking spell that binds the heart of man to her
forever?--Modesty!!!--In the words of Moore,

  “Let that which charms all other eyes
  Seem worthless in your own!”

Modesty is all in all; for it comprises the beauties of the mind as
well as those of the body; and happy is he who finds her!

The bosom, which nature has formed with exquisite symmetry in itself,
and admirable adaptation to the parts of the figure to which it is
united, has been transformed into a shape, and transplanted to a
place, which deprives it of its original beauty and harmony with the
rest of the person. This hideous metamorphosis has been effected by
means of newly-invented stays, or corsets, which, by an extraordinary
construction and force of material, force the figure of the wearer into
whatever form the artist pleases.

Curiosity may incline you to wish to know something better of these
buckram machines, that you may form an idea of their intention, use, or
rather inutility. I will satisfy you by describing them to the best of
my power.

The leader in this arming phalanx is usually called _long-stay_. And
its announcement to the female world, if not by drum or trumpet,
furnishes not only much matter for oratory in the advertisement, but
a no inconsiderable fund of merriment to the readers of these curious
performances. For instance, “Mrs. and Miss L. P. have willed it, and it
is done at their house,” &c. &c. Here follows a list of their _improved
long stay_, _pregnant stay_, _divorces_, &c. &c. O! female delicacy,
where is thy blush, when thou lookest on such exposure of the chaste
reserves of thy person!

The first time my eyes met these words so coupled, I was seized with
that honest shuddering which every delicate woman ought to feel at
seeing the parts and situations of her person which modesty bids her
conceal, thus dragged before the imagination of the opposite sex. The
pure must read it with the frown of disgust--the impure with the smile
of ridicule. To this moment, though I find that nothing disrespectful
to modesty was _meant_ by the advertisement, I cannot approve of the
terms in which it is written; for it is my opinion, (and I am so happy
as to be supported in it by the sanction of the wisest moralists,)
that, rob woman of her delicate reserves, and you take from her one of
the best strong holds of her chastity. You deprive her of her sweet
attractive mysteries; you lay open to the eye of love the arcana of her
toilet, the infirmities of her nature; the enchantment is broken, and
“the bloom of young desire, the purple light of the soul’s enthusiasm,”
expire at the disclosure.

To please my still curious readers, I will still further displease
myself, and enter more circumstantially into a detail of these strange
appendages to a female wardrobe.

But before I proceed with my remarks on the _long stay_, (the
ringleader of the rest,) I will so far rescue the intention of its
constructors from any _design_ to excite improper ideas by the words of
their advertisement, as to explain to you the proposed usefulness of
the inventions denominated _pregnant stay_, and _divorces_.

The first is a _corset_ or _stay_ of dimity, or jean, or silk, reaching
from the shoulders down to the waist, and over the hips, to the
complete envelopement of the body. It is rendered of more than ordinary
power by elastic bones, &c. which, introduced between the lining and
covering of the _stay_, bring it into something of the consistency
and shape of an ancient warrior’s hauberk. This new-fashioned coat of
mail for the fair sex is so constructed, as to compress and reduce to
the shape desired the natural prominence of the female figure in a
state of fruitfulness. Some women, who are bold enough to wear this
Procrustean garb during every stage of their pregnancy, affirm that
it preserves their shape without injury to their state of increase.
However this may be with a few hardy individuals, I profess myself no
proselyte to the innovation, as it must necessarily put a degree of
restraint upon the operations of nature, very likely to produce bad
effects both on the mother and the child.

Support and confinement to an overstrained part are two different
things; the one is beneficial, the other destructive. And this I can
assure my readers, that I ever have remarked those married women who
have longest maintained their virgin forms were those who, in a state
of maternal increase, observed a proper medium between a too relaxed
and a too contracted boddice.

Nature in these concerns is our best guide; and when she dictates to us
to provide against the possible disagreeable consequences of any of her
operations, it is well to obey her; but when a fastidious, and, allow
me to say, an indelicate, regard to personal charms would excite you
to brace with ribs of whalebone the soft mould of your unborn infant;
or when it has, in spite of these arts, burst its prison-house alive,
you seek to deprive it of the nourishment your breast prepares--then
remember you perform not the duty of a mother, but show yourself
rather egregiously guilty of wantonness and unpardonable cruelty.

No person living can feel a more lively admiration than that which
animates me at the sight of a beautiful form,

                              --“rife
  With all we can imagine of the sky.”

I behold in it the work of the most perfect being--the accomplishment
of one of his fairest designs. He seems to show in earthy mould the
lovely transcript of the angels of heaven: she looks, she breathes,
of innocence and sweet unconscious beauty. But when I cast my eyes on
women issuing from the house of a modern manufacturer of shapes; when
I see the functions of nature impeded by bands and ligatures; when I
behold the abode of virgin modesty thrust forward to the gaze of the
libertine; when I observe the pains taken to attract his eye,--I turn
away disgusted, and blush for my sex.

Vile as these meretricious arts are, they are not less dangerous to
health than to morals. The constant pressure of such hard substances as
whalebone, steel, &c. upon so susceptible a part as the bosom, is very
likely, in the course of a very short time, to produce all the horrid
consequences of abscesses, cancers, &c.: on their miseries I need not
to descant.

On the _long stay_ I shall now make a few remarks, arising from the
observations I have been enabled to make on the ladies of various ages
and figures whom I have known wear it. To the woman whose waning charms
set in an exuberance of flesh, perhaps the support of this adventitious
aid is an advantage. But in that case its stiffening should rather
be cord quilted in the lining, or very thin whalebone, than either
steel or iron. In all situations, the boddice should be flexible to
the motion of the body and the undulations in the shape; and it should
never be _felt_ to _press_ upon any part.

Thus far we may tolerate the adoption of this buckram suit for elderly,
or excessively _embonpoint_ ladies; but for the _growing_ girl (whom, I
am sorry to say, mothers not unfrequently imprison in these machines,)
it is both unrequired and mischievous.

Before nature has completed her work in the perfection of the youthful
figure, she is checked in her progress by the impediment which
the valves, bands, &c. of the _long stay_ throw in her way. Those
finely-rounded points which mark the distinction and the grace of the
female form, and which the artist, enamored of beauty, delights to
delineate with the nicest accuracy, are, by the constant pressure of
these _stays_, rendered indistinct, and in a short time are entirely
destroyed.

Let, then, the _long stay_ be restricted to the too abundant mass
of fattening matronhood; so may art restrain the excesses, not of
nature, but of disease. Unwieldly flesh was never yet seen in a
perfectly healthy person. It generally arises either from intemperance
overloading the functions of life, or dissipation decomposing them.

Let the _padded corset_ rectify the defects of the deformed; but where
nature has given the outline of a well-constructed form, forbear to
traverse her designs. Youth should be left to spring up, unconfined,
like the young cedar; and when the hand of man, or accident, does not
distort the pliant stem, it will grow erect and firm, spreading its
beautiful and cheerful shade over the heads of its planters.




OF THE DETAIL OF DRESS.

                              “We have run
  Through every change, that fancy at the loom
  Exhausted has had genius to supply;
  And, studious of mutation still, discard
  A real elegance a little used
  For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.”

  COWPER.


There are few things in which our sex can discover more taste than in
the choice of the apparel which may best accord with their several
styles of figures and features; but we frequently see the direct
opposite of good judgment in their selections, and behold between the
person and the attire a complete and laughable incongruity.

Some women will actually disguise and disfigure themselves, rather
than not appear in the prevailing fashion, which, though advantageous
to one character of face, may have the direct contrary effect with
another. I hinted at this in the earlier part of this dissertation; now
I come closer to my subject, intending to enter into a minute detail
of what ought or ought not to be worn by women of different moulds and
complexions.

If Daphne have the features of a Siddons, and Amaryllis those of a
Jordan, the style which agrees with the one must ill accord with the
other. The like harmony must be maintained between the complexion
and the colors we wear; for it is in these minutiæ which, like the
nice and almost imperceptible touches of the ingenious artist, produce
a complete and faultless whole. That a handsome woman may disfigure
herself by an injudicious choice or disposition of her attire; and a
plain one counteract the errors of nature, so as to render herself
at least agreeable, almost every experienced observer has witnessed.
We may therefore conclude, that beauty with a bad taste is far less
desirable than a good taste without beauty.

“What an awkward creature is that!” said a gentleman to me the other
evening at a supper, and pointing to a _slatternly_ beauty who sat
opposite, with her chin nearly reposing on her bosom, and her shoulders
drawn up almost to her ears. “Yonder is a very elegant woman!” observed
he, directing my attention to a lady who, critically considered, was
rather ordinary; but by her judicious style of dress, her unstudied
graces of deportment, claimed universal admiration.

To support my arguments with those of a lady whose taste is best
evinced by her own personal elegance, I shall give you a short extract
from a little tract of her’s, which, like the divine Psyché of Mrs.
Tighe, has been only permitted to meet the eyes of a favored few.

“Who is there among us that has not witnessed a beautiful woman so
apparelled as to render her rather an object of pity and ridicule than
of admiration? How often do we see simplicity and youthful loveliness
obscured by a redundancy of ornaments! How often do the robust and
healthy, the majestic and the gay, the pensive and the sportive,
follow the same mode; marring, mingling and mangling without mercy,
and without taste; regardless of discrimination, appropriation, or
judgment; to the total overthrow of the attractions which nature
liberally bestowed! Do not these ladies perceive that each style of
personal beauty has a distinct character to support? That a tasteful
adaptation will enforce the stamp which nature has impressed? Let
us then admonish the female whose beauty is of the fair, pale,
and interesting cast, not to render her appearance insipid by the
overpowering hues of robes, mantles, pelisses, &c. of amber, orange,
grass-green, crimson, or rose-color. This soft style of beauty makes
its appeal to our most delicate perceptions; all grossness of color
displeases them, and therefore should not be admitted in the articles
of her dress.

“Grass-green, though a color exceedingly pleasing and refreshing in
itself, jaundices the complexion of the pale woman to such a degree, as
to excite little other sensations in the beholder than compassion for
the poor invalid. Such females should, in general, choose their robes
of an _entire color_; and when they wear white garments, they should
animate them with draperies, mantles, scarfs, ribbons, &c. of pale
pink, blossom-color, celestial blue, lilac, dove-color, and primrose;
leaving full green, deep blue, and purple, to the florid; and amber,
scarlet, orange, flame-color, and deep rose, to the brunette.

“Thus much we offer in the suitable appropriations of colors. We
shall now proceed to say something on the prevailing fashions of the
day; and though we may fairly congratulate our countrywomen on their
taste and improvement in this particular, yet here also the regulating
hand of judgment, the nice and discriminating effects of genius, and
the directing influence of a delicate and just taste, become most
importantly necessary.

“The mantle, or cottage-cloak, should never be worn by females
exceeding a moderate _embonpoint_; and we should recommend their
winter garbs, such as Russian pelisses and Turkish wraps, to be formed
of double sarsnet, or fine Merino cloth, rather than velvets, which
(except black) give an appearance of increased size to the wearer. In
the adoption of furs, flat-ermine or fringe fur is better suited to
the full-formed woman that swan’s-down, fox, chinchilla, or sable;
these are graceful for the more slender. Women of a spare habit, and
of a tall and elegant height, will derive considerable advantage from
the full-flowing robe, mantle, and Roman tunic. The fur-trimming, too,
gives to them an appearance of roundness which nature has denied; and
to this description of person we can scarcely recommend an evening
dress more chaste, elegant, and advantageous, than robes of white
satin, trimmed with swan’s-down, with draperies of silver or gossamer
net. The antique head-dress, or queen Mary _coif_, is best adapted to
the Roman and Grecian line of feature. The Chinese hat and Highland
helmet are becoming to countenances of a rounder and more playful
contour.

“We have frequently, in our observations, found occasion to lament, in
the present style of female dress, a want of that proper distinction
which should ever be attended to in the several degrees of _costume_.
For instance, the short gown, so appropriate and convenient for
walking, and pursuing morning avocations or exercises, intrudes
beyond its sphere when seen in the evening or full dress. It is in
the splendid drawing-room that the train robe appears with all that
superiority which gives pre-eminence to grace, and dignity to beauty.

“Why should these pleasingly-varying distinctions be neglected? The
long sleeve, too, (now so universal in almost every order of dress,)
belongs with strict propriety only to the domestic habit. These are
inattentions or faults which a correct taste will quickly discover, and
easily rectify. It is dangerous to level distinctions in one case, and
disadvantageous in the other. There should be a just and reasonable
discipline in trifles, as well as in matters of higher import. There is
a vast deal more in things of seeming insignificance than is commonly
imagined. Subjects of importance, high achievements, and glorious
examples, strike every beholder; but there are few who reflect that
it is by perseverance, and attention to comparative trifles, that
mighty deeds are performed, and that great consequences are ultimately
produced.

“A correct taste is ever the concomitant of a chaste mind; for,
as a celebrated author has justly observed, _our taste commonly
declines with our merit_. A correct taste is the offspring of all
that is delicate in sentiment and just in conception; it softens
the inflexibility of truth, and decks reason in the most persuasive
garments.

“A walking-dress cannot be constructed too simply. All attractive and
fancy articles should be confined to the carriage-dress, or dinner
and evening apparel. We shall here particularly address the order of
females who may not have the luxury of a carriage, and yet be within
the rank of gentlewomen. This class composes treble the number of those
to whom fortune has bestowed the appendages of equipages and retinue.
We shall, in our observations, particularly aim at increasing their
respectability, by leading them to adopt a style of adornment, which,
while it combines fashion and elegance, shall be remarkable only for
its neatness and simplicity.

“It has been said that the love of dress is natural to the sex; and we
see no reason why any female should be offended with the assertion.
‘Dress,’ says an author on the subject, ‘is the natural finish of
beauty. Without dress a handsome person is a gem, but a gem that is not
set.’ Dress, however, must be subject to certain rules; be consistent
with the graces, and with nature. By attention to these particulars, is
produced that agreeable exterior which pleases, we know not why,--which
charms, even without that first and powerful attraction, beauty.

“Fashion, in her various flights, frequently soars beyond the reach of
propriety. Good sense, taste, and delicacy, then make their appeal in
vain. Her despotic and arbitrary sway levels and confounds. Where is
delicacy? where is policy? we mentally exclaim, when we see the fair
inconsiderate votary of fashion exposing, unseemly, that bosom which
good men delight to imagine the abode of innocence and truth. Can the
gaze of the voluptuous, the unlicensed admiration of the profligate,
compensate to the woman of sentiment and purity for what she loses in
the estimation of the moral and the just?

“But, delicacy apart, what shall we say to the blind conceit of the
robust, the coarse, the waning fair one, who thus obtrude the ravages
of time upon the public eye? Let us not offend. We wish to lead
to conviction, not to awaken resentment.--Fashion must, in these
instances, have borrowed the bondage of fortune, and so blinded her
votaries against the sober dictates of reason, the mild dignity of
self-respect.

“There is a mediocrity which bounds all things, and even fixes the
standard which divides virtue from bombast. Let us, therefore, in
every concern, endeavor to observe this happy temperature. Let the
youthful female exhibit, without shade, as much of her bust as shall
come within the limits of fashion, without infringing on the borders
of immodesty. Let the fair of riper years appear less exposed. To
sensible and tasteful women a hint is merely required. They need
not very close instructions; for at once they perceive, combine,
and adopt, with judgment and delicacy. The rules of propriety are
followed, as it were, instinctively by them; and their example is
so impressed on the generality of our lovely countrywomen, (who,
too often and inconsiderately, follow the vagaries of fashion with,
perhaps, ridiculous avidity,) that we must take upon us to correct
the irregularities of the many, in hopes that the judicious few will
embrace grace, and make it universal.

“Far be it from us to lead the female mind from its solemn engagements
to the pursuit of comparative nothings. But there is a time and place
for all things, and for every innocent purpose under heaven; and on
these grounds we do not see why a female should not blend the agreeable
with the estimable.

“There are persons who neglect their dress from pride, and a desire
to attract by a careless singularity; but wherever this is the case,
depend on it something is wrong in the mind. Lavater has observed,
that persons habitually attentive to their attire display the same
regularity in their domestic affairs. ‘Young women,’ he continues, ‘who
neglect their toilet, and manifest little concern about dress, indicate
a general disregard of order; a mind but ill adapted to the detail of
house-keeping; a deficiency of taste, and of the qualities that inspire
love:--they will be careless in everything. The girl of eighteen who
desires not to please, will be a slut, or a shrew, at twentyfive. Pay
attention, young men, to this sign; it never yet was known to deceive.’

“Hence we see that the desire of exhibiting an amiable exterior is
essentially requisite in woman. It is to be received as an unequivocal
symbol of those qualities which we seek in a wife; it indicates
cleanliness, sweetness, a love of order, and of universal propriety.
What, then, is there to censure in a moderate consideration of
dress?--Nothing. We may blame when we find extravagance, profusion,
misappropriation; the tyranny of fashion; slavery to vanity; in short,
bad taste!

“Let us then urge the British fair to that elegant simplicity, that
discriminating selection, which combines fashion, utility, and grace.
Thus shall the inventive faculty of genius be honored and encouraged,
and industry receive the reward of its ingenuity and labors.

“We shall now proceed to notice the present articles which claim
fashionable pre-eminence, and give some useful hints on their
application.

“As a walking habit, we know of none in summer which is more graceful
than the lightly flowing shade of lace or finest muslin. And in winter
no invention can exceed the Trans-Baltic coat or Lapland-wrap. These
comfortable shields from the cold are usually formed of cloth or
velvet, with deep collars and cuffs of sable, or other well-contrasted
fur. Ladies of the first nobility usually have them lined throughout
with the same costly skins. These garments wrap over the figure in
front; sometimes they have them without other ornament than their
bordering furs; and at others, fasten them with magnificent clasps and
buckles. We have seen one of these coats (or, as northern travellers
denominate them, _shoubs_,) on a female of high rank, composed of
crimson-velvet, with deep cuffs, cape and collar of spotted ermine, and
a deep border of the same down the sides. It had a superb effect; and,
with the imperial helmet-hat of the same material, exhibited one of the
most sumptuous carriage costumes that can be imagined.

“When this dress is adopted by the pedestrian fair, we recommend it to
be of a more sober hue, and that the bonnet should be of the provincial
poke or cottage form.

“Short women destroy the symmetry of their forms, and encumber their
charms, with redundancy of ornament, either in their morning or evening
attires. A little woman, befeathered and furbelowed, looks like a queen
of the Bantam tribe; and we dare not approach her for fear of ruffling
her plumes. Feathers are much in vogue; and though formerly a symbol of
full dress, are now often a mark of graceful negligence, and are seen
falling carelessly, and floating with ease; they kiss the rosy cheek
of youth and health; or, less courteous, steal the vermilion from the
painted face of fading maturity, as, fanned by the spiteful breeze,
they wave from her bonneted head in the gay promenade.

“We love to see our countrywomen remarkable for elegance and modesty,
as well as beauty. Englishmen, accustomed to objects of undisputed
loveliness, aim at something beyond the surface of external charms;
they require that all should be fair within.

“Hear what a male writer has observed on the fashion of exposing
the bosom! ‘A woman, proud of her beauty,’ says he, ‘may possibly
be nothing but a coquette; one who makes a public display of her
_bosom_, is something worse.’ This writer insinuates too much; for we
believe that so far from our females being actuated in this case by
any unbecoming motive, they too commonly act from no motive at all,
save that blind and mistaken one which we have so much condemned--_the
heedless adoption of an absurdity because it is the fashion_! But
let the inconsiderate beauty remember, that where two motives can be
assigned to an action, the world will generally adopt that which is
least favorable!”

Though I have made this extract, which enters so intimately into the
secrets of the toilet, and descants so engagingly on its attractive
subject, I must desire that it may not be supposed I would seek
to create an inordinate degree of care respecting that which is
comparatively of no account, when placed in competition with the
indispensable qualities and acquirements which ought to adorn the
Christian maid. I would have my fair friends be fully impressed with
the truth, that it is not she who spends the most time at her toilet
that is usually the best dressed; a too zealous care generally subverts
the effect it was meant to produce. It is very easy to “varnish till
the painting disappears.” A multiplicity of ornaments ever distracts
the attention, and detracts from feminine loveliness. They are regarded
as a sort of _make weights_ in a scale, where nature must have been a
niggard to render them necessary.

In the like manner, a diversity of colors bespeaks vulgarity of
taste, and a mind without innate elegance or acquired culture. Where
doubt may be about this or that hue being becoming or genteel (as it
is very possible it may neither be the one nor the other,) let the
puzzled beauty leave both, and securely array herself in simple white,
“pure as her mind.” That primeval hue never offends, and frequently
is the most graceful robe that youth and loveliness can wear. “It is
inconceivable,” says a writer on the subject, “how much the color of
a gown or a shawl may heighten or destroy the beauty of a complexion;
and how much the sex in general neglect these (to them) important
particulars.” Every consideration must yield to the prevailing mode;
and to this tyrant all advantages are sacrificed. Women no longer
consult their figures, but the whim of the moment; and it is sufficient
for them that the Duchess of D----, or the Marchioness of E----,
appeared in _murry_ color or _coquelicot_, to make all the _belles_ in
England, black, brown, or fair, array themselves in the same livery.

Nothing contributes more to the setting forth of the beauties of a
complexion than the choice of the colors opposed to it. Women should
not only be nice in this adaptation, but they must be careful that
the different shades or hues they admit in the various parts of their
garments should accord with each other.

Here it is that we distinguish the woman of taste from the hoyden,
ready to employ a pedlar’s pack upon her shoulders. To attempt to
contrast two shades of the same color, has in general a very harsh
effect; indeed I never saw it harmonize in the least, except in the
case of two greens as a trimming; or in the beautiful blending of
nature in the form and hues of flowers.

It is also not unworthy of remark, that colors which are to make a
part of evening apparel ought to be chosen by candle-light; for if
in the morning, forgetful of the influence of different lights on
these things, you purchase a robe of pale yellow, purple, lilac, or
rose-color, you will be greatly disappointed when at night it is
observed to you that your dress is either dingy, foxy, or black.

The harmonious assortment of well-chosen colors was once quite a
science amongst women; and even now it may not only be considered as
a specimen of delicate taste, but a proof of that genius which, if
cultivated, might distil the hues of Iris over the animated canvass
fraught with beauty and life.

This union of a thousand dyes, “by nature’s pure and cunning hand laid
on,” cannot be found in greater perfection than in the resplendent lap
of summer; then the earth teems with gay enchantment, and presents to
the fair wanderers through her fragrant bowers the loveliest raiment
for their beauties. This animating and native ornament, so interesting
and charming in itself, should ever find a place on the toilet of
youth. How can a beauteous young woman (the fairest production of
creation) be more suitably adorned than with this sweet apparel of the
fairest season? It is uniting “sweets to the sweet.” Flowers recall so
many pleasing images to the mind, that when a beholder sees them, he is
ever put in a temper to admire; and, when they are found blended with
the beauties of a lovely girl, the effect is irresistible.

The simple wreath of roses, the jessamine, the lily of the valley,
the snow-drop, the brilliant ranunculus, and a long train of rival
sweets, offer themselves at the shrine of female taste. From this rich
assemblage are selected and formed those delicious garlands which deck
the snowy brows of Celia, which twine with Chloe’s golden hair. From
this fair parterre we collect the variegated _bouquet_, which, reposing
on the bosom of beauty, mingles its fragrant breath with hers.

This tender, this exquisite sweetness, which we inhale from the lily,
the rose, or the violet, is far preferable to all the extracted
perfumes that ever were wafted “from Indus to the pole.” They are not
only purer and more balmy; but, when, on approaching a lovely woman,
we find, not only our eye delighted with the sight of beauty, but our
senses “wrapped in the sweet embrace of soft perfumes;” when it is not
the preconcerted fragrancy of essences drawn from east to west, and
poured upon the fair with the design to _affect our senses_; then we
yield ourselves to the lovely breathing of nature. We see her in the
charming creature before us, blooming in youth and freshness; we feel
her in the thousand odors of Paradise emanating from the newly-plucked
flowers, which seem to share her being, imbibing and partaking
sweetness.

Amidst the variety of materials with which women decorate their
persons, there is not one that requires greater discrimination in the
use than those articles of jewelry which we denominate trinkets. Here
good taste, the general regulatrix, now resumes her sway. The blind
directress of the luxuriant imagination gives grace to solidity, and
consequence to trifles. Her magic spirit breathes in the laurels of
the hero, dwells on the lip of oratory, and sparkles in the gem that
decorates the fair!

To women of the most exalted as well as of the more humble ranks, we
recommend a moderate, rather than a profuse, display of conspicuous
and showy ornaments. A well-educated taste ought to open the eyes
of a woman to be a tolerably correct judge of the perfections or
imperfections of her own person; and by that judgment she ought to
regulate the adoption or rejection of striking decoration.

It is well to remind my youthful reader that she can never learn these
truths (when they are on the defective side) but from the decisions
of her own impartial mind. Few women, much less men, would venture to
say to an improperly dressed young lady,--“Madam, your fingers are two
clumsy to wear with advantage that brilliant ring;--your neck and arms
are two meagre, discolored, or coarse, to adopt the pearl bracelet
or necklace; unless, indeed, you soften the contrast by putting a
lace shirt and long sleeves between your skin and the pearls.” These
observations would place the too frank adviser in a similar situation
with that of Gil Blas when correcting the manuscripts of the conceited
_Prelate of Granada_;--and, therefore, we cannot expect that any friend
should run the risk of incurring our resentment, when they might retain
our favor by only permitting us to make ourselves as ridiculous as we
please.

Let me then, in the light of an _author_, who cannot be supposed,
in a general address, to mean any individual personal reflections,
admonish my readers, one and all, not to neglect composing their
complexions with the hues and brilliancy of the gems offered to them to
wear. Clear brunettes shine with the greatest lustre when they adopt
pearls, diamonds, topazes, and bright amber. The fair beauty may also
wear all these with advantage, while she exclusively claims as her
own, emeralds, garnets, amethysts, rubies, onyxes, &c. &c. Cornelian,
coral, and jet, may be worn by either; but certainly produce the most
pleasing effect on the rose and lily complexion.

Ornaments and trimmings of silver are to be preferred to gold, when
intended for the fair beauty. The white lustre of the first of these
costly metals harmonizes better with delicacy of skin than the glaring
effulgence of the gold. By a parity of reasoning, gold agrees better
with the brunette, as its yellow and flaming hue lights up the fire of
her eyes, and exhibits her complexion in the brightest contrast.

If the _clavicle_, or collar-bone, be too apparent, either from
accidental thinness or original shape, remedy the defect by letting
the necklace fall immediately into the cavity which the ungraceful
projection occasions. But should this bone protrude itself to an
absolutely ugly extent, I would recommend the neck to be completely
covered by a lace handkerchief and frill; for its exposure would only
give a bad specimen of a figure which may be, in every other part, of a
just and fine proportion.

If the prevailing fashion be to reject the long sleeve, and to
partially display the arm, let the glove advance considerably above the
elbow, and there be fastened with a drawing-string, or armlet. But this
should only be the case when the arm is muscular, coarse, or scraggy.
When it is fair, smooth, and round, it will admit of the glove being
pushed down to a little above the wrists.

There is perhaps no single beauty of the female form which obtains so
much admiration as a well-proportioned foot and ankle. Possibly the
liveliness of this sentiment may be increased in this instance by the
rarity of the perfection being found amongst the British fair.

There is a _je ne sais quoi_ in a fine ankle, which seems to assure the
gazer that the whole of the form, of which it is a sample, is shaped
with the same exquisite grace. A heavy leg and foot seems to hint that
the whole of the limbs which the drapery conceals are in a gravitating
proportion with their clumsy foundations; and where we see ponderosity
of body, we are apt to conclude that there is equal heaviness in mind
and feelings. This may be an unjust mode of reasoning, but it is a very
common one; and so I account for the general prejudice against any
unusual weight in the lower extremities.

When we consider that it required the famous sculptor of Greece to
collect the most beautiful virgins from every part of his country
before he could find a living model for every part of his projected
statue of perfect beauty; when we consider this, that the very native
land of female charms could not produce one woman completely faultless
in her form--how can we be so unreasonable as to demand such perfection
in a daughter of Britain?

Let not the other sex scrutinize too closely, nor demand that
universal and correct symmetry in their wives and daughters, which
was never yet found but in the elaborately chiseled models of the
sculptor’s study.

It must not, however, be presumed from what I have said, that the
generality of other countries are happier in the beautiful formation
of their women’s forms than England, or that the British fair are at
all more notorious than many other nations for heavy feet and legs. So
far from it, there are ladies in England with feet and ankles of so
delicate a symmetry, that there is nothing in modelling or in marble
to excel their perfection. But to make a display of them--to exhibit
them by unusually short petticoats, and draw attention by extraordinary
gay attire, is an instance of immodesty and ill-taste, which attracts
contempt instead of admiration. Men despise her for her impropriety,
and envious women have a fair subject on which to ground their
detractions.

In short, it can never be sufficiently inculcated, that modesty is the
most graceful ornament of beauty.

  “She that has that, is clad in complete steel.”

Be the foot eminently handsome, or the reverse, it alike requires to be
arrayed soberly. Except on certain brilliant occasions, its shoe should
be confined to grave and clean-looking colors; of the first, black,
grays, and browns; of the last, white, nankeen, pale-blue, green, &c.,
according to the color of the dress, and the time of day. I should
suppose it almost useless to say, that (except in a carriage) the dark
colors ought to be preferred in a morning. To be sure, there is nothing
out of character in wearing nankeen shoes or half-boots in the early
part of the day, even in walking, provided the other parts of your
dress be spotless white, or of the same buff hue. The other delicate
colors I have mentioned above (I repeat, except in a carriage) are
confined to evening dresses. Red morocco, scarlet, and those very vivid
hues, cannot be worn with any propriety until winter, when the color of
the mantle or pelisse may sanction its fulness. On brilliant assembly
nights, or court drawing-rooms, the spangled or diamond-decorated
slipper has a magnificent and appropriate effect. But for the raiment
of the leg, we totally disapprove, at all times, of the much ornamented
stocking.

The open-wove clock and instep, instead of displaying fine proportion,
confuse the contour; and may produce an impression of gaiety, but
exclude that of beauty, whose rays always strike singly. But if the
cloak be a colored or a gold one, as I have sometimes seen, how glaring
is the exhibition! how coarse the association of ideas it produces
in the fancy! Instead of a woman of refined manners and polished
habits, your imagination reverts to the gross and revolting females
of Portsmouth-point, or Plymouth-dock; or at least to the hired
opera-dancer, whose business it is to make her foot and ankle the
principal object which characterizes her charms, and attracts the _coup
d’œil_ of the whole assembly.

If I may give my fair friends a hint on this delicate subject, it would
be that the finest rounded ankles are most effectually shown by wearing
a silk stocking _without any clock_. The eye then slides easily over
the unbroken line, and takes in all its beauties. But when the ankle is
rather large, or square, then a pretty unobtrusive net clock, of the
same color as the stocking, will be a useful division, and induce the
beholder to believe the perfect symmetry of the parts. A very thick leg
cannot be disguised or amended; and in this case I can only recommend
absolute neatness in the dressing of the limb, and petticoats so long
that there is hardly a chance of its ever being seen.

One cause of _thick ankles_ in young women is want of exercise, and
abiding much in overheated rooms. Standing too long has often the same
effect, by subjecting the limb to an unnatural load, and therefore to
swelling. The only preventive, or cure, for this malady, is a strict
attention to health. You might as well expect to see a rose-bush
spring, bud, and bloom, in a closely-pent oven, as anticipate fine
proportions and complexion from a long continuance of the exotic
fashions of modern days.

If a girl wishes to be well-shaped and well-complexioned, she must
use due exercise _on foot_. Horseback is an excellent auxiliary, as
it gives much the same degree of motion, with double the animation,
in consequence of the change of air, and variation of objects; but
carriage exercise is so little, that we cannot recommend it to any case
that is short of an absolute invalid. A woman in respectable health
must _walk_, to maintain her happy temperament. By this she will still
more consolidate her solids, and preserve the shape with which nature
has kindly endowed her. If it was originally fine, it will remain;
and if it was but ordinary, it will at least save itself from growing
deformed.




ON DEPORTMENT.

  “Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
  In every gesture dignity and love.”

  MILTON.


Having discoursed so largely on form and apparel, I shall now throw
together a few hints on that indispensable assistant-grace of beauty,
an elegant and appropriate air.

This subject should be particularly considered; and the arguments from
such reflections strongly enforced on the attention of young women.
There is scarcely an observer of manners and their effects, who will
not maintain that the most beautiful and well-dressed woman will soon
cease to please, unless her charms are accompanied with the ineffable
enchantment of a graceful demeanor. A pretty face may be seen every
day, but grace and elegance, being generally the offspring of a
polished mind, are more distinguished.

While we exult in the pre-eminent beauty of our fair countrywomen;
while we talk of their lilies and roses, and downy skins; we cannot but
shrink from comparison when we bring their manners in parallel with the
females of other nations, who have not half their corporeal advantages.

I am not going to deny, that in this land of beauty, (a land to which
a certain cardinal, many centuries ago, gave the appellation of _the
native paradise of angels_!) we shall find the fair

  “Fitted to shine in courts, or walk the shade,
  With innocence and contemplation join’d.”

There are many lovely women of all ranks in England who merit this
encomium: but I am not writing an eulogium on these happy exceptions;
I feel it my duty to admonish the general race of my female
contemporaries. To the rising generation I especially address myself;
and when the young belle in her teens listens to the suggestions of
experience, perhaps the advice may not be quite so unpalatable, when
she understands that it comes from one who has studied the graces
at more than one of the courts of the Bourbons; and, since their
dispersion, has followed the flight of elegance wherever it was to be
found.

The _awkward, reserved_ air of the early part of the last century
has given way, not to _grace_ and _frankness_, but to an _unblushing
impudence_, which is the very assassin of female virtue and connubial
honor. Think not I am too severe, ye indulgent mothers! regard me
not as a cynic, ye thoughtless daughters of imitation! I mean not to
arraign your hearts, but your manners; I seek to pluck the garb of
Phryné from your chaste and Christian shoulders. Who, that is an
actress, when called upon to perform the part of spotless _Virginia_,
would rush upon the stage half naked, dancing, rolling her eyes as
if intoxicated, and flirting with every officer of the _pretorian
guard_ who crossed her path? In such a case should we not call the
actress mad? or say, “If such were Virginia, he performed a rash and
unnecessary act, who avenged the insulted person of such a wanton on
the first magistrate of Rome!”

Yet such Virginias are our Virginias! and to see a modest, abashed,
retiring, blushing girl enter one of our assemblies, is as uncommon a
sight as now and then an embassy from a foreign land. The modern taste
for exhibitions of all kinds is the chief source of this depravity;
a girl is no longer taught to dance that she may move easily in the
occasional festivities of her neighborhood, and enjoy the graceful
exercise of a birth-day or a race ball, without annoying the movements
of her companions. No! these are not sufficient: she takes her lessons
of the _corps de ballet_, that she may present herself in the ball-room
or on a stage; and while the motions of her limbs, and the exposure
of her person, scandalize every discreet matron present, she believes
herself the object of general admiration, the very _ne plus ultra_ of
the art. In like manner, her musical talents are cultivated. She does
not learn to compose, with her sweet lullaby, the unquiet hours of
old age or of sickness, to rest and sleep: enough for her relations,
father, brothers, husband, that she practises all day the crude and
disagreeable parts of her lessons. It is for the guest, the gay
assembly, the concert of _amateurs_, that she reserves her harmonies;
and to them she sings and plays till she believes _herself_ the tenth
muse, and _them_ her adorers.

Can we be surprised that from such an education should be produced the
vain, the conceited, the presumptuous, the impudent?

To check this growing evil, by showing the young candidate for
admiration what is “woman’s best knowledge and her praise;” to show her
what is indeed the proper, the graceful, the winning deportment, is the
design of these few following pages; and I trust that my young reader
will receive them as the admonition of a tender and experienced parent,
and not allow “a mother’s precepts to be vain!”

Having laid it down as a first principle, that no demeanor, whether
in a princess or a country girl, can be becoming that is not grounded
in _feminine delicacy_, I shall proceed to show, that a different
deportment is expected from different persons. Certain characteristics
of persons are suited to certain styles of manner; and also the same
demeanor does not agree as well with the steward’s daughter as the
squire’s bride.

As in a former chapter I have particularized the dresses which are
adapted to the gay and the grave, so in the next I propose pointing out
the appropriate miens which belong to the various degrees of beauty and
classes of society.




PECULIARITIES IN CARRIAGE AND DEMEANOR.

  “By her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known.”

  VIRGIL.


As order is the beautiful harmonizer of the universe, so consistency is
the graceful combiner of all that is in woman to perfection.

In reference to this sentiment, her manners must bear due affinity
with her figure, and her deportment with her rank. The youthful and
delicate-shaped girl is allowed a gaiety of air which would ill become
a women of maturer years and larger proportions; but at all times of
life, when the figure is slender, a swan-like neck, and the motions
are naturally swaying, for that girl, or that woman, to affect what
is called a majestic air, would be as unavailing as absurd. It is
not in the power of a figure so constructed ever to look majestic.
By stiffening her joints, walking with an erect mien, and drawing up
her neck, she would certainly be upright; she would seem to have had
a determined dancing-master, who, in spite of nature and grace, had
made her _hold up her head_; but she would never look like anything
but a stiff, inelegant creature. The character of these slight forms
corresponds with their resemblances in the vegetable world: the
aspen, the willow, bend their gentle heads at every passing breeze,
and their flexible and tender arms toss in the wind with grace and
beauty: such is the woman of delicate proportions. She must enter a
room either with the buoyant step of a young nymph, if youth is her
passport to sportiveness; or, if she is advanced nearer the meridian
of life, she then may glide in, with that ease of manner which gives
play to all the graceful motions of her elegantly undulating form. For
her to crane up her neck, would be to change its fine swan-like bend
into the scraggy throat of the ostrich: all her movements should be of
a flexible character. Her mode of salutation should be rather a bow
than a courtesy; and when she sits, she should model her easy attitude
rather by the ideas of the painter, when he would pourtray a reclining
nymph, than according to the lessons of the grace-destroying governess,
who would marshal her pupils on their chairs like a rank of drilled
recruits. In short, for a slender or thin woman, to be stiff at any
time, is, in the first case, to render of no effect the advantages of
nature; and, in the next, to increase and aggravate her defects, by
making it more conspicuous by a constrained and ridiculous carriage.

Though we cannot unite the majestic air which declares command with
this easy, nymph-like deportment, the dignity of modesty may be its
inseparable companion. The timid, the retreating step; the downcast
eye; the varying complexion, “blushing at the deep regard she draws!”
all these belong to this class of females; and they are charms so
truly feminine, so exquisitely lovely, that I cannot but place them
with their counterpart, the ethereal form, as the perfection of female
beauty.

The woman whose figure bears nature’s own stamp of majesty, is
generally of a stately make; her person is squarer, and has more of
_embonpoint_ than the foregoing. The very muscles of her neck are so
formed as to show their adaptation to an erect posture. There is a
sort of loftiness in the natural movement of her head, in the high
swell of her expansive bosom. The step of this woman should be grave
and firm: her motions few and commanding; and the carriage of her
head and person erect and steady. An excess in stateliness could not
have any worse effect on her, than perverting the majesty of nature
into the haughtiness of art. We might admire or revere the first; the
last we would probably resent and detest. The dignified beauty must
therefore beware of overstraining the natural bent of her character: it
is like the bombast of exalted language which never fails to lose its
aim, and engender disgust. We might laugh at a delicate girl, so far
exaggerating the pliancy of her form and ease of manners, as to twist
herself into the thousand antics of a Columbine: she aims at pleasing
us, and though she chooses the wrong method, we will not frown, but
only smile at the ridiculous exhibition. But when a majestic fair one
presumes to arrogate an undue consequence in her air, it is not to
gratify our senses that she assumes the extraordinary diadem: and,
irritated at the contempt her greatness would wish to throw upon us
inferior personages, we treat her like an usurper; and, armed with a
sense of injustice, we determine to pull her at once from her throne.

The easy, graceful air, we see, belongs exclusively to the slender
beauty, and the moderated majestic mien to a greater _embonpoint_.

There is a race of women whose persons have no determined character.
These must regulate and adopt their demeanors according to the degrees
in which they approach the two before-mentioned classes. But in all
cases, let it never be forgotten, that a too faint copy of a model is
better than an overcharged one. Excess is always bad. Moderation never
offends. By falling easily into the degree of undulating grace, or the
dignified demeanor which suits your character, you merely put on the
robe which nature designed, and the habit will be fit and becoming.

But when the nymph-like form assumes a regal port, or a commanding
dame pretends to “skip and play,” the affectation on both sides is
equally absurd: discords of this kind are ever ridiculous and odious.
Besides these, there are affectations of other descriptions, of equal
folly and bad effect. Some ladies, to whom nature has given a good
sight, and lovely orbs to look through, must needs pretend a kind
of half-blindness, and they go peeping about through an eye-glass,
dangling at the end of a long gold chain, hanging at their necks. Not
content with this affectation of one defect, they assume another, and
lisp so inarticulately, that hardly three words in a sentence are
intelligible. All such follies as these are not more a death-blow to
all respect for the novice that plays them off, than they are sure
antidotes to any charms she may possess. Simplicity is the perfection
of form; simplicity is the perfection of fine dressing; simplicity is
the perfection of air and manners.

In the details of carriage, we must not omit a due attention to gait,
and its accompanying air. We find that it was “by her _graceful walk_
the Queen of Love was known!” In this particular, the French women far
exceed us. Pope observes, that “they move easiest who have learnt to
_dance_.” And it is the step of the highly-accomplished dancer that we
see in the generality of well-bred Frenchwomen; not the march of the
military sergeant, which is the usual study with our pedestrian Graces.
There is a buoyant lightness, a dignified ease in the walk of a lady,
who has been taught the use of her limbs by a fine dancer, which is
never seen in her who has been drilled by the halbert, and told to
_stand at ease_ with her hands resting on her stomach, as if reposing
on the trigger of her fire-lock. Such a way as we have fallen upon
to teach our daughters the _graceful step of the Queen of Love_, is,
indeed, so singular, that until another race of Amazons arise, to whom
military tactics may be useful, we have no chance of any imitators.
Indeed, the marching walk of Englishwomen is so ridiculous, even in the
eyes of their own countrymen, that I remember of being one day in St.
James’s Park, with one of these female recruits, when a sentinel, with
a humorous gravity, struck his musket to her as she passed.

Both in the case of air and gait, it is necessary to begin early
to train the person and the limbs to the ease and grace you wish.
It is difficult to straighten the stem long left to diverge into
irregular wildness; but the tender tree, pliant in youth, needs only
the directing hand of a careful gardener to train it to symmetry and
luxuriance.

Many of the naturally most pleasing parts of the female shape have
I seen assume an appearance absolutely disgusting; and all form an
_outre_ air, vulgar manners, or hoydening postures. The bosom, which
should be prominent, by a lounging attitude, sinks into slovenly
flatness, rounding the back, and projecting the shoulders! On the one
side, I have seen a finely-proportioned figure transform herself
into a perfect fright by this awkward neglect of all propriety and
grace; and, on the other, I am acquainted with a lady, whose beauty,
taken in the common acceptation of the word, would not obtain her a
second look, but in the elegance of her manners, in the dignity of
her carriage, in the taste and disposition of her attire, and in the
thousand inexpressible charms which distinguish the gentlewoman, she is
so powerful that none can behold her without captivation.

A late author, in a work entitled, “Remarks on the English and French
Ladies,” very ably points out the superior attention which the women
of France pay to the cultivation of their air and manners; and he
proceeds, with no inconsiderable degree of eloquence, to exhort the
British fair not to lose, by a careless neglect, the advantages which
nature has given them over the _belles_ of _la grande nation_.

“It must not be dissembled,” says this writer, “that our much fairer
countrywomen (the English) are too often apt to forget that native
charms may receive considerable improvement by attending to the
regulation of carriage and motion. They ought to be reminded, that
it is chiefly by an attention of this kind, that the Frenchwomen,
though unable to rival them in such exterior perfections as are the
gift of nature, attain, however, to a degree of eminence in other
accomplishments, that effaces the recollection of their inferiority
in personal charms.” He proceeds to observe, that “the gracefulness of
a French lady’s step is always a subject of high commendation in the
mouth even of Frenchmen;” and again he says, “conscious where their
advantage lies, they spare no pains to improve that grace of manner,
that fund of vivacity, which are in their nature so agreeable, and
which they know so well how to manage to the best effect.”

My intimacy with the French manners makes me quote these short extracts
with greater pleasure; and as I bear witness to the truth of their
evidence, I hope that an amiable ambition will unite in the breasts
of the British fair, to rise as much superior to their French rivals
in all feminine graces, as our British heroes are to the French on
the seas! We shall then see cultivated understandings, unaffected
cheerfulness, and manners of an enchantment not to be exceeded by the
fairest sorceresses in beauty and grace.

_Sorceresses_ I would make you, my gentle friends; but your spells
should be those of nature and of virtue. While I exhort you to preserve
your persons in comeliness, to array yourselves in elegance and sweet
attractive grace, I would not lead you to believe, that these are
all your charms; that these are sufficient “to take the captive soul
of love, and lap it in Elysium!” No; woman was created for higher
attainments; many a heart was formed to pant for dearer joys than
these can produce. Woman must, in every respect, and at all times,
regard her form as a secondary object; her mind is the point of her
first attention; it is the strength of her power; the part that links
her with angels; and, as such, she must respect, cultivate, and exalt
it.

But as these familiar pages are expressly intended as a little treatise
on _the dress_ of these admirable qualities, I do not suppose it
demanded of me to enter so minutely into the subject of mind, as I
otherwise should have esteemed it my duty. We have before admitted,
that while on this earth wandering amongst the erring and voluptuous
sons of men, virtue must be clad in an attractive garb, else few
will love her for herself. To this end, then, like Solon of Athens,
I give the best directions the inmates of this gay world are capable
of receiving--though, perhaps, not the best I could lay down. I would
win the too earth-clinging soul by his senses, to give up his sensual
enjoyments, and, caught by earthly charms, see and feel his connexion,
and leaving the grosser part, aspire to mingle being with those alone
which partake of immortality.

It is not by the showy attire of meretricious splendor, by the
seductive air of Sybaritical refinement, that I would effect this. “It
is good that virtue keep ever with its like!” my means should ever be
consistent with their object. So, with me, beauty, elegance, and grace,
should be the only pleaders for the empire of morals and religion. On
these principles, as I am aware that the most estimable and amiable
qualities adorn the wives and daughters of our isle, I cannot but be
the more solicitous that their outward deportment and appearance should
exhibit a fair specimen of their inward worth.

“An upright heart, and sensibility of soul, are doubtlessly the most
noble qualifications of the fair sex. These, Englishwomen possess in
an eminent degree. But there are lighter, and perhaps more catching
attractions, which, though they will not bear a competition, are
nevertheless great smoothers of the rough passages of life, and very
necessary conducives to social happiness.”

It is the opinion of wiser heads than mine, that no circumstance,
however trifling in itself, should be neglected, which strengthens
the bonds of an honorable and mutual attachment; and so great is the
privilege allowed for this purpose, that it is deemed laudable in woman
to collect into herself all the innocent advantages, mentally and
corporeally, which may render her most admirable and precious in the
eyes of him who may be, or is, her husband.

This latter sentiment reminds me to impress upon my young friend, that
there are shades of demeanor which must be varied according to the
sex, degree, and affinity of the persons with whom she converses. To
men of all ranks and relations, she must ever hold a reserve on certain
subjects, and indeed on almost every occasion, that she does not deem
necessary to observe with regard to her own sex. To inferiors of both
sexes she must ever preserve a gracious condescension; but to the men a
certain air of majesty must be mixed with it, that she need not assume
to the women. To her equals, particularly of the male sex, her manners
must never lose sight of a dignity sufficient to remind them that she
expects respect will be joined with probable intimacy. In short, no
intimacy should ever be so familiar as to allow of any infringement
on the decent reserves which are the only preservers of refinement in
friendship and love. What are called _cronies_ amongst girls, are among
the worst of connexions, as they generally are the very hotbeds of
fancified love-fits, secrecies, and really vulgar tale-bearing.

  “Celestial friendship!
  Whene’er she stoops to visit earth, one shrine
  The goddess finds, and one alone,
  To make her sweet amends for absent Heaven,--
  The bosom of a friend, where heart meets heart,
  Reciprocally soft--
  Each other’s pillow to repose divine!”

This friendship is indeed the gift of Heaven--a boon more precious than
much fine gold; but it is not usually to be found in school _cronies_,
or in the confidence of misses, whose unbosomings usually consist of
flirtations, complaints against parents and guardians, and schemes
for future parties of pleasure. Friendship is too sacred for these
pretenders; under her influence, “heart meets heart,” and acknowledges
her as the pledge of Heaven to man, of immortality, and endless joys.
To such an intimate your whole soul may be laid open. But such an
intimate is rare. You may meet her once in the shape of a female
friend, and in that of a tender husband! But believe not that her
appearance will be more frequent. Hers are “like angels’ visits, few
and far between!” Earth would be too much like heaven were it otherwise.

To the generality, then, of your equals, while you are affable and
amiable with them all, you must be intimate with few, and preserve an
ingenuous reserve with most. Show them your sense of propriety demands
a certain distance, and with redoubled respect they will yield what you
require. With men of your acquaintance, you ought to be more reserved
than with women. But while I counsel such dignity of manners, you
must not suppose that I mean starchness, stiffness, prudery; I only
recommend the modesty of the virgin--the sober dignity of matron years.

The present familiarity between the sexes is both shocking to
delicacy, and to the interests of women. Woman is now treated by the
generality of men with a freedom that levels her with the commonest
and most vulgar objects of their amusements. She is addressed as
unceremoniously, treated as cavalierly, and left as abruptly, as the
veriest puppet they could pick up at a Bartholomew Fair.

We no longer see the respectful bow, the look of polite attention, when
a gentleman approaches a lady. He runs up to her; he seizes her by the
hand, shakes it roughly, asks a few questions, and, to show that he has
no interest in her answers, flies off again before she can make a reply.

To cure our coxcombs of this conceited impertinence, I would strongly
exhort my young and lovely readers. When any man, who is not privileged
by the right of friendship or of kindred, to address her with an air of
affection, attempts to take her hand, let her withdraw it immediately,
with an air so declarative of displeasure, that he shall not presume
to repeat the offence. At no time ought she to volunteer shaking hands
with a male acquaintance, who holds not any particular bond of esteem
with regard to herself or family. A touch, a pressure of the hands, are
the only external signs a woman can give of entertaining a particular
regard for certain individuals; and to lavish this valuable power of
expression upon all comers, upon the impudent and contemptible, is an
indelicate extravagance which, I hope, needs only to be exposed to be
put forever out of countenance.

As to the salute, the pressure of the lips--that is an interchange
of affectionate greeting, or tender farewell, sacred to the dearest
connexions alone. Our parents--our brothers--our near kindred--our
husband--our lover, ready to become our husband,--our bosom’s inmate,
the friend of _our heart’s core_--to them are exclusively consecrated
the lips of delicacy, and wo be to her who yields them to the stain of
profanation!

By the last word, I do not mean the embrace of vice, but merely that
indiscriminate facility which some young women have in permitting what
they call a _good-natured kiss_. These _good-natured kisses_ have often
very bad effects, and can never be permitted without injuring the fine
gloss of that exquisite modesty, which is the fairest garb of virgin
beauty.

I remember the Count M----, one of the most accomplished and handsomest
young men in Vienna. When I was there, he was passionately in love with
a girl of almost peerless beauty. She was the daughter of a man of
great rank and influence at court; and on these considerations, as well
as in regard to her charms, she was followed by a multitude of suitors.
She was lively and amiable, and treated them all with an affability
which still kept them in her train, although it was generally known
that she had avowed a predilection for Count M. and that preparations
were making for their nuptials. The Count was of a refined mind and
delicate sensibility. He loved her for herself alone--for the virtues
which he believed dwelt in a beautiful form; and, like a lover of such
perfections, he never approached her without timidity, and when he
touched her, a fire shot through his veins that warned him never to
invade the vermilion sanctuary of her lips. Such were the feelings,
when one night at his intended father-in-law’s, a party of young people
were met to celebrate a certain festival. Several of the young lady’s
rejected suitors were present. Forfeits were one of the pastimes, and
all went on with the greatest merriment, till the Count was commanded
by some witty mademoiselle to redeem his glove by saluting the cheek
of his intended bride. The Count blushed, trembled, advanced to his
mistress, retreated, advanced again--and at last, with a tremor that
shook every fibre in his frame, with a modest grace he put the soft
ringlet which played upon her cheek to his lips, and retired to demand
his redeemed pledge in evident confusion. His mistress gaily smiled,
and the game went on. One of her rejected suitors, but who was of a
merry unthinking disposition, was adjudged, by the same indiscreet
crier of the forfeits,--“as his last treat before he hanged himself,”
she said,--to snatch a kiss from the lips of the object of his recent
vows--

  “Lips whose broken sighs such fragrance fling,
  As Love had fanned them freshly with his wing!”

A lively contest between the lady and the gentleman lasted for a
minute; but the lady yielded, though in the midst of a convulsive
laugh. And the Count had the mortification, the agony, to see the lips,
which his passionate and delicate love would not allow him to touch,
kissed with roughness and repetition by another man, and one whom he
despised. Without a word, he rose from his chair, left the room--and
the house; and, by that _good-natured kiss_, the fair boast of Vienna
lost her husband and her lover. The Count never saw her more.




 ON THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PERSON IN DANCING, AND IN THE EXERCISE OF
 OTHER FEMALE ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

  On with the dance! let joy be unconfined.

  _Childe Harold._


It is vain to expend large sums of money and large portions of time in
the acquirement of accomplishments, unless some attention be also paid
to the attainment of a certain grace in their exercise, which though a
circumstance distinct from themselves, is the secret of their charms
and pleasure-exciting quality.

As dancing is the accomplishment most calculated to display a fine
form, elegant taste, and graceful carriage, to advantage; so towards
it, our regards must be particularly turned; and we shall find that
when Beauty, in all her power, is to be set forth, she cannot choose a
more effective exhibition.

By the _exhibition_, it must not be understood that I mean to
insinuate anything like that scenic exhibition which we may expect
from professors of the art, who often, regardless of modesty, not only
display the symmetry of their persons, but indelicately expose them,
by most improper dresses and attitudes, on the public stage. What I
propose by calling dancing an elegant mode of showing a fine form to
advantage, has nothing more in it, than to teach the lovely young woman
to move unembarrassed and with peculiar grace through the mazes of a
dance, performed either in a private circle, or public ball.

It must always be remembered, and it cannot be too often repeated,
“That whatever it is worth while to do, it is worth while to do
_well_.” Therefore, as all times and nations have deemed dancing a
salubrious, decorous, and beautiful exercise, or rather happy pastime
and celebration of festivity, I cannot but regard it with particular
complacency. Dancing carries with it a banquet, alike for taste and
feeling. The spectator of a well-ordered English ball sees, at one
view, in a number of elegant young women, every species of female
loveliness. He beholds the perfection of personal proportion. They
are attired with all the gay habiliments of fashion and of fancy; and
their harmonious and agile movements unfold to him, at every turn, the
ever-varying, ever-charming grace of motion.

Thus far his senses only are gratified. But the pleasure stops not
there. His best feelings receive their share also. He looks on each
gay countenance, he sees hilarity in every step; he listens to their
delightful converse, communicated by snatches; and, with a pleasure
sympathizing with theirs, he cannot but acknowledge that dancing is
one of the most innocent and rational, as well as the most elegant,
amusements of youth.

It is indeed the favorite pastime of nature. We find it in courts, we
meet it on the village green. Here the rustic swain whispers his ardent
suit to his blushing maid, while his beating heart bounds against hers
in the swift wheel of the rapid dance. There the polished courtier
breathes a soft sigh into the ear of the lady of his vows, as he and
she timidly entwine their arms in the graceful _allemande_. But dancing
has been appropriated to higher purposes than these; it formed a part
of the religious ceremonies of the Jews.

In every age of fashion but the present, dancing was as much expected
from young persons of both sexes, as that they should join in smiles
when mutually pleased. In days of yore, in the most polite eras of
Greece and Rome, and of the chivalrous ages, we find that dancing was
a favorite amusement with the first ranks of men. Kings, heroes, and
unbearded youth, alike mingled in the graceful exercise. Even in our
own island, we read of the splendid balls given by our Plantagenets and
Tudors; and that every prince and nobleman contended in happy rivalry
who should best acquit themselves in the dance. Here it was that the
royal Harry lost his heart to the lovely Anna Bullen, and in such
scenes did the gallant lords of his virgin daughter’s court breathe out
their souls at the feet of British beauty.

Such _was_ the court of England! but now, where is “the merry dance,
the mirth-awakening viol?” In vain our princes led forth their royal
sisters and the fairest ladies in the land to celebrate, with festive
steps, the birth-day; our noble youth, smit with a love of grave folly,
abandon the ball for the gaming-table. The elegant society of the fair
is disregarded and exchanged for fellowship with grooms and masters
of the whip. Shame on them! I cannot descant farther on such vulgar
desertion of all that is lovely and decorous.

Besides the royal brothers, a few yet remain amongst the young men of
our higher ranks, who, in this respect, set a worthy example to the
youth of inferior stations; and them we still meet at the assemblies of
taste, moving with propriety and elegance in the social dance. To make
acceptable partners in the minuet, cotillon, &c. with these yet loyal
votaries of Terpsichore, I beg leave to offer a few hints to my gentle
readers.

Extraordinary as it may seem, at a period when dancing is so entirely
neglected by men in general, women appear to be taking the most pains
to acquire the art. Our female youth are now not satisfied with what
used to be considered _a good dancing-master_; that is, one who made
teaching his sole profession; but now our girls must be taught by the
leading dancers at the opera-house.

The consequence is, when a young lady rises to dance, we no longer see
the graceful, easy step of the gentlewoman, but the labored, and often
indelicate exhibition of the posture-mistress.--Dances from _ballets_
are introduced; and instead of the jocund and beautifully-organized
movements of hilarity in concord, we are shocked by the most
extravagant theatrical imitations. The chaste minuet is banished; and,
in place of dignity and grace, we behold strange wheelings on one leg,
stretching out the other till our eye meets the garter; and a variety
of endless contortions, fitter for the zenana of an Eastern satrap,
or the gardens of Mahomet, than the ball-room of an Englishwoman of
quality and virtue.

These _ballet_ dances are, we now see, generally attempted. I may say
_attempted_, for not one young woman in five hundred, can, from the
very nature of the thing, after all her study, perform them better than
could be done any day by the commonest _figurante_ on the stage. We all
know, that to be a fine opera-dancer, requires unremitting practice,
and a certain disciplining of the limbs, which hardly any private
gentlewoman would consent to undergo. Hence, ladies can never hope to
arrive at any comparison with even the poorest public professor of the
art; and therefore, to attempt the extravagancies of it, is as absurd
as it is indelicate.

The utmost in dancing to which a gentlewoman ought to aspire, is an
agile and graceful movement of her feet, an harmonious motion with her
arms, and a corresponding easy carriage of her whole body. But, when
she has gained this proficiency, should she find herself so unusually
mistress of the art as to be able, in any way, to rival the professors
by whom she has been taught, she must ever hold in mind, that _the same
style of dancing is not equally proper for all kinds of dances_.

For instance, the English country-dance and the French cotillon require
totally different movements. I know that it is a common thing to
introduce all the varieties of opera-steps into the simple figure of
the former. This ill-judged fashion is inconsistent with the character
of the dance, and consequently so destroys the effect, that no pleasure
is produced to the eye of the judicious spectator by so discordant
an exhibition. The characteristic of an English country-dance is
that of _gay simplicity_. The steps should be few and easy, and the
corresponding motion of the arms and body unaffected, modest, and
graceful.

Before I go further on the subject, I cannot but stop a little to dwell
more particularly on the necessity there is for more attention than we
usually find paid to the management of the arms, and general person, in
dancing.

In looking on at a ball, perhaps you will see that every woman, in a
dance of twenty couple, moves her feet with sufficient attention to
beauty and elegance; but, with regard to the deportment, of the rest
of the person, most likely you will not discover one in a hundred who
seems to know more about it than the most uncultivated damsel that ever
jogged at a village wake.

I cannot exactly describe what it is that we see in the carriage of
our young ladies in the dance; for it is difficult to point out a want
by any other expression than a negative. But it is only requisite for
my readers to recall to memory the many inanimate, ungraceful forms,
from the waist upwards, that they nightly see at balls, and I need not
describe more circumstantially.

For these ladies to suppose that they are fine dancers because they
execute a variety of difficult steps with ease and precision, is a
great mistake. The motion of the feet is but half the art of dancing;
the other, and indeed the most conspicuous part, lies in the movement
of the body, arms, and head. Here elegance must be conspicuous.

The body should always be poised with such ease as to command a power
of graceful undulation, in harmony with the motion of the limbs in the
dance. Nothing is more ugly than a stiff body and neck during this
lively exercise. The general carriage should be elevated and light;
the chest thrown out, the head easily erect, but flexible to move
with every turn of the figure; and the limbs should be all braced and
animated with the spirit of motion, which seems ready to bound through
the very air. By this elasticity pervading the whole person when the
dancer moves off, her flexible shape will gracefully sway with the
varied steps of her feet; and her arms, instead of hanging loosely by
her side, or rising abruptly and squarely up to take hands with her
partner, will be raised in beautiful and harmonious unison and time
with the music and the figure; and her whole person will thus exhibit
to the delighted eye perfection in beauty, grace, and motion.

This attention to the movement of the general figure, and particularly
to that of the arms (for with them is the charm of elegant action,)
though, in a moderated degree, is equally applicable to the English
country dance and the Scotch reel, as to the minuet, the cotillon, and
other French dances.

A general idea of natural grace, in all dances, being laid down as a
first principle in this elegant art, I shall suggest a few remarks on
the leading characters of each style; and from them, I hope, my fair
friends will be able to gather some rules which may serve them as
useful auxiliaries to the lessons of their dancing-master.

The English country-dance, as its very name implies, consists of
simplicity and cheerfulness; hence the female who engages in it, must
aim at nothing more, in treading its easy mazes, than executing a few
simple steps with unaffected elegance. Her body, her arms, the turn of
her head, the expression of her countenance, all must bear the same
character of negligent grace, of elegant activity, of decorous gaiety.

The Scotch reel has steps appropriated to itself, and in the dance
can never be displaced for those of France, without an absurdity too
ridiculous even to imagine without laughing. There are no dancers
in the world more expressive of inward hilarity and happiness than
the Scotch are, when performing in their own reels. The music is
sufficient--so jocund are its sounds--to set a whole company on their
feet in a moment, and to dance with all their might, till it ceases,
like people bit by the tarantula. Hence, as the character of reels is
merriment, they must be performed with much more _joyance_ of manner
than even the country-dance; and, therefore, they are better adapted,
as society is now constituted, to the social private circle, than to
the public ball. They demand a frankness of deportment, an undisguised
jocularity, which few large parties will properly admit; therefore,
they are more at home in the baronial and kindred-filled hall of the
thane of the Highland clan, than in the splendid and mixed ball-room of
the now modish Anglo-Scottish earl.

French dances, which includes minuets, cotillons, and all the round of
_ballet_ figures, admit of every new refinement and dexterity in the
agile art; and, while exhibiting in them, there is no step, no turn,
no attitude, within the verge of maiden delicacy, that the dancer may
not adopt and practise.

I must acknowledge that there is something in the harmonious and
undulating movements of the minuet, particularly pleasing to my idea
of female grace and dignity; and I remember seeing her Highness the
Princess de P----, at the court of Naples, go through the _minuet de la
Cour_ with so eminent a degree of enchanting elegance, that there was
not a person present who was not in raptures with her deportment.

The young Archduke, C----, of A----, was then a youth, and an incognito
visitant with the Prince de V---- F----, and he was so charmed with
the dancing of her highness, whose partner was the renowned General
Marchese di M----, that, in his own heroic manner, he exclaimed to me,
who then sat by his side,--“Ah! madam, that is more interesting than
even the Pyrrhic dance! It reminds me of the beautiful movement of the
sun and moon in the heavens!”

The _minuet_ is now almost out of fashion, but we yet have its serious
movements in many of the dances adopted from the French _ballet_; and
in these every gradation of grace, and, if I may say it, sentiment
in action, may be discovered. The rapid changes of the cotillon
are admirably calculated for the display of elegant gaiety; and I
hope that their animated evolvements will long continue a favorite
accomplishment and amusement with our youthful fair.

Though much of graceful display is made in these dances, yet there are
many rivals in the cotillon contending for the palm of superiority;
and the contest, throughout, if maintained with the original elegant
decorum of the design, may be continued with undeviating modesty and
discretion.

But with regard to the lately introduced German waltz, I cannot speak
so favorably; I must agree with Goethé, when writing of the national
dance of his country, “that none but husbands and wives can with any
propriety be partners in the waltz.”

There is something in the close approximation of persons, in the
attitudes, and in the motion, which ill agrees with the delicacy of
woman, should she be placed in such a situation with any other man than
the most intimate connexion she can have in life. Indeed, I have often
heard men, of no very over-strained feeling, say, “that there are very
few women in the world with whom they could bear to dance the German
waltz.”

The fandango, though graceful in its own country--because danced,
from custom, with as reserved a mind as our maidens would make
a courtsy,--is, nevertheless, when attempted here, too great a
display of the person for any modest Englishwoman to venture. It
is a solo! Imagine what must be the assurance of the young woman,
who, unaccustomed by the habits of her country to such singular
exhibitions of herself, could get up in a room full of company, and,
with an unblushing face, go through all the evolutions, postures, and
vaultings, of the Spanish fandango? Certainly, there are few discreet
men in England who would say, “such a woman I should like for my wife!”

The castanets, which are used in this dance, by attracting
extraordinary attention, afford another argument against its being
adopted anywhere but on the stage. The tambourin, the cymbals, and all
other noisy accompaniments, in the hands of a lady-dancer, are equally
blameable; and though a woman may, by their means, exhibit her agility
and person to advantage, she may depend on it, that while the artist
only is admired, the woman will sink into contempt; and that, though
she may possibly meet with lovers to throw a score of embroidered
handkerchiefs at her feet, she will hardly encounter one of a thousand
who will venture to trust himself to the offering her the bond of a
single gold ring.

The bullero, another of our Spanish importations, is a dance of so
questionable a description, that I cannot but proscribe it also. It may
be performed with perfect modesty; but the sentiment of it depends so
entirely on the disposition of the dancer, that Delicacy dare hardly
venture to enrol herself in its lists, lest the partner chosen for her
might be of a temper to turn its gaiety into licentiousness; to produce
blushes of shame where she promised herself the glow of pleasure, and
send her away from what ought to have been an innocent amusement,
filled with the bitterness of insulted delicacy.

In short, in addressing my fair countrywomen on this subject, I would
sum up my advice, in regard to the choice of dances, by warning
them against the introduction of new-fangled fashions of this sort.
Let them leave the languishing and meretricious attitudes of modern
_ballet_-teachers to the dancing-girls of India, or to the Circassian
slaves of Turkey, whose disgraceful business is to please a tyrant for
whom they can feel no love.

Let our British fair also turn away from the almost equally unchaste
dances of the southern kingdoms of the continent, and, content with
the gay step of France, and the active merriment of Scotland, with
their own festive movements, continue their native country balls to
their blameless delight, and to the gratification of every tasteful and
benevolent observer.

While thus remarking on the manner of dancing, it may not be
unacceptable to add a few words on the dress most appropriate to its
light and unembarrassed motions.

Long trains are, of course, too cumbrous an appendage to be
intentionally assumed when proposing to dance; but it must also be
remarked, that very short petticoats are as inelegant as the others
are inconvenient. Scanty circumscribed habiliments impede the action
of the limbs, and, besides their indelicacy, show the leg in the least
graceful of all possible points of view. The most elegant attire for
a ball is, that the under garments should be absolutely short, but
the upper one, which should be of light material, should reach at
least to the top of the instep. It should also be sufficiently full
to fall easily in folds from the waist downwards to the foot. By this
arrangement, when the dancer begins her graceful exercise, the drapery
will elegantly adapt itself to the motion and contour of her limbs; and
falling accidentally on her foot, or as accidentally when she bounds
along, discovering, under its flying folds, her beautifully-turned
ankle. Symmetry and grace will be occasionally displayed, almost
unconsciously, and thus Modesty, taken unawares, will adorn, with
blushes, the perfect lineaments of female beauty.

What has been said in behalf of simple and appropriate dancing, may
also be whispered in the ear of the fair practitioner in music; and, by
analogy she may, not unbeneficially, apply the suggestions to her own
case.

There are many young women, who, when they sit down to the piano or
the harp, or to sing, twist themselves into so many contortions, and
writhe their bodies and faces about into such actions and grimaces,
as would almost incline one to believe that they are suffering under
the torture of the toothach, or the gout. Their bosoms heave, their
shoulders shrug, their heads swing to the right and left, their lips
quiver, their eyes roll; they sigh, they pant, they seem ready to
expire! And what is all this about? They are merely playing a favorite
concerto, or singing a new Italian song.

If it were possible for these conceit-intoxicated warblers, these
languishing dolls, to guess what rational spectators say of their
follies, they would be ready to break their instruments and be dumb
forever. What they call _expression in singing_, at the rate they would
show it, is only fit to be exhibited on the stage, when the character
of the song intends to portray the utmost ecstasy of passion to a
sighing swain. In short, such an echo to the words and music of a love
ditty, is very improper in any young woman who would wish to be thought
as pure in heart as in person. If amatory addresses are to be sung, let
the expression be in the voice and the composition of the air, not in
the looks and gestures of the lady-singing. The utmost that she ought
to allow herself to do, when thus breathing out the accents of love, is
to wear a serious, tender countenance. More than this is bad, and may
produce reflections in the minds of the hearers very inimical to the
reputation of the fair warbler.

While touching on song, it may not be unwelcome to my truly virgin
readers to have their own delicate rejections sanctioned by a matron’s
judgment against a horde of amorous legends, now chanted forth in
almost every assembly, where they put their heads. Pretty music, and
elegant poetry, seem sufficient excuses to obtain, in these days, not
only pardon, but approbation, for the most exceptionable verses that
can fall from the pen of man. Such madrigals are now sung with equal
applause by mother and daughter, chaste and unchaste; all unite in
shamelessly breathing forth words, (and with appropriate languishments
too,) which hardly would become the lips of a Thais! Libertines may
feel pleasure in such exhibitions--men of principle must turn away
disgusted.

Set then this music of Paphos far aside; instead of songs of wantons,
if we are to have amatory odes, let us listen to the chaste pleadings
of a Petrarch, to the mutual vows of virtuous attachment. My young
friend may then sing with downcast eyes and timid voice, but no blush
needs to stain her cheek--no thrill of shame shake her bosom. She
merely chants of nature’s feelings; and Modesty veiling the sensibility
she describes, angels might “lean from heaven to hear.”

By this slight sketch, my dear readers will perceive that I mean
_simplicity_ to be the principle and the decoration of all their
actions; as it should pervade them in the dance, so it should imbue
their voice and action in playing and in singing.

Let their attitude at the piano or the harp be easy and graceful. I
strongly exhort them to avoid a stiff, awkward, elbowing position at
either; they must observe an elegant flow of figure at both. The latter
certainly admits of most grace, as the shape of the instrument is
calculated, in every respect, to show a fine figure to advantage. The
contour of the whole form, the turn and polish of a beautiful hand and
arm, the richly-slippered and well-made foot on the pedal stops, the
gentle motion of a lovely neck, and, above all, the sweetly-tempered
expression of an intelligent countenance; these are shown at one glance
when the fair performer is seated unaffectedly, yet gracefully, at the
harp.

Similar beauty of position may be seen in a lady’s management of a
lute, a guitar, a mandolin, or a lyre. The attitude at a pianoforte,
or at a harpsichord, is not so happily adapted to grace. From the
shape of the instrument, the performer must sit directly in front of a
straight line of keys; and her own posture being correspondingly erect
and square, it is hardly possible that it should not appear rather
inelegant. But if it attain not the _ne plus ultra_ of grace, at least
she may prevent an air of stiffness; she may move her hands easily
on the keys, and bear her head with that elegance of carriage which
cannot fail to impart its own character to the whole of her figure.
One of the most graceful forms that I ever saw sit at an instrument,
is that of St. Cecilia, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, playing on
the organ. It is the portrait of the late Mrs. R. B. Sheridan; and,
from the simplicity of the attitude, and the graceful elevation of the
head, it is, without exception, one of the most interesting pictures I
ever beheld. A living instance of what beauty and grace, elegance and
propriety combined, can do, has always been admired in the Marchioness
of D---- by all those who ever had the felicity to see and hear her
at the piano; an engraving of her portrait, in that attitude, would
teach every female lover of the art unaffected elegance, much more
effectually than all that the advices and ability of masters can ever
be able to perform.

If ladies, in meditating on grace of deportment, would rather consult
the statues of fine sculptors, and the figures of excellent painters,
than the lessons of their dancing-masters, or the dictates of their
looking-glasses, we should, doubtless, see simplicity where we now
find affectation, and a thousand ineffable graces taking place of the
present _régime_ of absurdity and conceit.

It was by studying the perfect sculpture of Greece and Rome, that a
certain lady of rank, eminent for her peculiarly beautiful attitudes,
acquired so great a superiority in mien above her fair contemporaries
of every court in which she became an inmate. It was by meditating on
the classic pictures of Poussin, that one of the first tragic actresses
on the French stage learnt to move and look like the _daughter of the
sun_. And by a similar study, has our own Melpomene caught inspiration
from the pencil of Corregio and Rubens.

Glancing at the graphic art, reminds me that some degree of proficiency
in this interesting accomplishment is also an object of study with my
fair young countrywomen. I shall not make any observation on their
progress in the art itself, but only with regard to their manner of
practising it.

Both for health and beauty’s sake, they should be careful not to stoop
too much, or to sit too long in the exercise of the pencil. A bending
position of the chest and head, when frequently assumed, is apt to
contract the lungs, round the back, redden the face, and give painful
digestions and headach. An awkward posture in writing, reading, or
sewing, is productive of the same bad effects; and, what may seem
almost incredible, (but many who have witnessed the same, can, I am
sure, give their evidence in support of my representation,) there are
young persons, who, when writing, drawing, reading, or working, keep a
sort of ludicrous time with their occupations, by making a succession
of unmeaning and hideous grimaces. I have seen a pretty young woman,
while writing a letter to her lover, draw up her lips, and twist the
muscles of her face in every direction that her pen moved; and so ugly
did she look during this sympathetic performance, that I could not
forbear thinking that, could her swain see the object then dictating
her vows, he would take fright at the metamorphosis, and never be made
to believe it could be the same person.

Mumbling to yourself, while reading, is also another very inelegant
habit. A person should either read determinately so much aloud as to
be heard distinctly by the company present, or peruse her book without
even moving her lips. An inward muttering, or a silent motion of the
mouth, while reading, is equally unpleasant to the observer, and
disfiguring to the observed.

In short, there is nothing, however minute in manners, however
insignificant in appearance, that does not demand some portion of
attention from a well-bred and highly-polished young woman. An author
of no small literary renown, has observed, that several of the minutest
habits or acts of some individuals, may give sufficient reasons to
guess at their temper. The choice of a gown, or even the folding
and sealing of a letter, will bespeak the shrew and the scold, the
careless and the negligent. This observation I have made myself, not
only in this, but in several other countries. The Marchioness of B----
addressed me, a few years ago, in a letter so cleanly folded, so
carefully sealed, that I was really prejudiced in her favor, ere I saw
that my surmises were right; and the flame-color ribbon, fluttering
about the Hon. Mrs. D.’s head, had given me a foreboding of her
acrimonious and fiery disposition. These fine and almost imperceptible
objects are the touches which bring the whole to its utmost perfection.
They are the varnish to the picture, the polish to the gem, the points
to the diamond.

I will go further upon this subject. The very voice of an individual,
the tone she assumes in speaking to strangers, or even familiarly to
her friends, will lead a keen observer to discover what elements her
temper is made of. The low key belongs to the sullen, sulky, obstinate,
the shrill note to the petulant, the pert, the impatient; some will
pronounce the common and trite question “how _do_ you _do_?” with such
harshness and raucity, that they seem positively angry with you that
you should ever _do_ at all. Some effect a lispingness, which at once
betrays childishness and downright nonsense; others will bid their
words to gallop so swiftly, that the ablest ear is unable to follow the
rapid race, and gathers nothing but confused and unmeaning sounds. All
these extremes are to be avoided; and, although nature has differently
formed the organs of speech for different individuals, yet there is a
mode to correct nature’s own aberrations. I have heard of sensible
men, who, merely for the tone of voice which did not quite harmonize
with their ears, have dropped their connexion with women, who, in all
other points were unexceptionable.

Admit this, and another salutary truth will be made manifest. If
good-breeding and graceful refinement are ever _most proper_, they
are always so. It is not sufficient that Amaryllis is amiable and
elegant in her whole deportment to strangers and to her acquaintance;
she must be undeviatingly so to her most intimate friends, to nearest
relations, to father, mother, brothers, sisters, husband. She must have
no _dishabille_ for them, either of mind or person.

This last word inclines me to pursue the hint further; to exhort my
fair readers, while I plead for consistency in manners, also to carry
the analogy to dress. If they would always appear amiable, elegant,
and endearing to the beings with whom they are to spend their lives,
let them always make those beings the first objects for whose pleasure
their accomplishments, their manners, and their dress are to be
cultivated. Let them never appear before these tender relatives in the
disgusting negligence of disordered and soiled clothes. By this has
many a lovely girl lost her lover; and by this has many an amiable wife
alienated the affections of her husband.

Let me, then, in concluding this chapter, again repeat, that
consistency is the soul of female power, the charm of her fascination,
the bond of her social happiness.




CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT.

  “Observe the just gradation of degree.”


The carriage of a woman to her equals being founded on a just
appreciation of their merits, and a proper respect to herself, the same
sentiment will be found to pervade her conduct to her superiors in rank.

With regard to men, when they occupy a higher station than herself, she
must proportion reverential courtesy to them, according to the rules of
court ceremony. If she knows them merely as officers high in authority
under the king, or as nobles distinguished by their honors, her manner
must then be of calm, dignified respect. But when she finds that merit
is yet higher in any of these men than his titles, then, let her show
the homage of the soul, as well as that of the body; for real greatness
ennobles the head which bows.

With regard to her own sex, the same rule must be observed. There are
certain regulations in society which are called Laws of Precedence.
They are of as much use in maintaining a due and harmonious order
amongst civilized men and women, as the law of attraction is to
preserve the heavenly bodies in their proper orbits. As one star
differs from another in magnitude and splendor, in proportion to the
destiny it hath to fulfil; so do the talents and degrees of men vary
according to the allotted duties they have to perform. Hence, as in
astronomy, we think not of despising Mercury, because he is not as
large as Saturn, nor of speaking of our own Earth as a planet of no
account, because she has not four moons like Jupiter; so, by parity of
reasoning, we do not esteem our inferiors or equals the less, because
they do not fill the first orders in society. All ranks have their
proper place, the station in which they can be the most useful; and it
is in proportion as they perform their respective duties, that we must
respect the individuals.

We, therefore, regard society as a grand machine, in which each member
has the place best fitted for him; or, to make use of a more common
illustration, as a vast drama, in which every person has the part
allotted to him most appropriate to his abilities. One enacts the
King, others the Lords, others the Commons; but all obey the Great
Director, who best knows what is in man. Regarding things in this
light, all arrogance, all pride, all envyings and contempt of others,
from their relative degrees, disappear, as emotions to which we have no
pretensions. We neither endowed ourselves with high birth or eminent
talents. We are altogether beings of a creation independent of our own
will; and, therefore, bearing our own honors as a gift, not as a right,
we should condescend to our inferiors, (whose place it might have been
our lot to fill,) and regard with deference our superiors, whom Heaven,
by so elevating, has intended that we should respect.

This sentiment of order in the mind, this conviction of the beautiful
harmony in a well-organized civil society, gives us dignity with our
inferiors, without alloying it with the smallest particle of pride;
by keeping them at a due distance, we merely maintain ourselves and
them in the rank in which a higher Power has placed us; and the
condescension of our general manners to them, and our kindness in their
exigencies, and generous approbation of their worth, are sufficient
acknowledgments of sympathy, to show that we avow the same nature with
themselves, the same origin, the same probation, the same end.

Our demeanor with our equals is more a matter of policy. To be
indiscreetly familiar, to allow of liberties being taken with your
good-nature; all this is likely to happen with people of the same
rank with ourselves, unless we hold our mere acquaintance at a proper
distance, by a certain reserve. A woman may be gay, ingenuous,
perfectly amiable to her associates, and yet reserved. Avoid all
sudden intimacies, all needless secret-telling, all closeting about
nonsense, caballing, taking mutual liberties with each other in regard
to domestic arrangements; in short, beware of familiarity! The kind
of familiarity which is common in families, and amongst women of the
same classes in society, is that of an indiscriminate gossiping; an
interchange of thoughts without any effusion of the heart. Then an
unceremonious way of reproaching each other, for a real or supposed
neglect; a coarse manner of declaring your faults; a habit of jangling
on trifles; a habit of preferring your own whims or ease before that of
the persons about you; an indelicate way of breaking into each other’s
privacy. In short, doing everything that declares the total oblivion of
all politeness and decent manners.

This series of errors happens every day amongst brothers and sisters,
husbands and wives, and female acquaintances: and what are the
consequences? Distaste, disgust, everlasting quarrels, and perhaps
total rupture in the end!

I have seen many families bound together by the tenderest affection; I
have seen many hearts wrought into each other by the sweet amalgamation
of friendship; but with none did I ever find this delicious foretaste
of the society in Elysium, where a never-failing politeness was not
mingled in all their thoughts, words, and actions, to each other.

Deportment to superiors must ever carry with it that peculiar degree
of ceremony which their rank demands. No intimacy of intercourse with
them, no friendship and affection from them, ought ever to make us
forget the certain respect which their stations require. Thus, for a
mere gentlewoman to think of arrogating to herself the same homage of
courtesy that is paid to a lady of quality, or to deny the just tribute
of precedence, in every respect, to that lady, would be as absurd as
presumptuous. Yet we see it; and ridicule, from the higher circles,
is all she derives from her vain pretensions. By the same rule, every
woman of rank must yield due courtesy to those above her, in the just
gradation, according to their elevation in the scale of nobility. The
law of courts on this subject is soon understood, and, as a guide to
my young readers, who may not yet have been sufficiently informed, I
shall, beneath, give them a list of female titles, according to their
precedence in the march of hereditary and other honors. I shall begin
with the highest rank, as it is that which, in all public processions,
or in private parties, has the right of standing or moving first.

As the crown of the whole, I set down a Queen. Then Princesses. Then
follow, in regular order, Duchesses, Marchionesses, Countesses. The
Wives of the eldest sons of Marquisses. The Wives of the younger sons
of Dukes. Daughters of Dukes. Daughters of Marquisses. Viscountesses.
Wives of the Eldest sons of Earls. Daughters of Earls. Wives of the
younger sons of Marquisses. Baronesses. Wives of the eldest sons of
Viscounts. Daughters of Viscounts. Wives of the younger sons of Earls.
Wives of the eldest sons of Barons. Daughters of Barons. Wives of the
younger sons of Viscounts. Wives of the younger sons of Barons. Wives
of Baronets. Wives of Privy Counsellors. Commoners. Wives of Judges.
Wives of Knights of the Garter. Wives of Knights of the Bath. Wives of
Knights of the Thistle. Wives of Knights Bachelors. Wives of Generals.
Wives of Admirals. Wives of the eldest sons of Baronets. Daughters of
Knights, according to their fathers’ precedence. Wives of the younger
sons of Baronets. Wives of Esquires and Gentlemen. Daughters of
Esquires and Gentlemen. Wives of Citizens and Burgesses. The Wives of
Military and Naval Officers of course take precedence of each other in
correspondence with the rank of their husbands.

This scale, if every young lady would bear in mind and conform to it,
is a sufficient guide to the mere ceremony of precedence; and would
effectually prevent those dangerous disputes in ball-rooms about
places, and those rude jostlings in going in and out of assemblies,
which are not more disagreeable than ill-bred. It is the perfection
of fine breeding to know your place, to be acquainted with that of
others; and to fall gracefully into your station accordingly. While
the gentlewoman is content to move in the train of female honors,
the dignified decorum of step forms one graceful link in the chain
of society; but if she struggles to get before, strikes one to her
right, and the other to her left; treads down alike her equals and her
superiors, in her eagerness for pre-eminence; we fly from the shrew,
and declare her unworthy of fellowship with any class of well-ordered
females.

The deference we pay to superiors, our inferiors will refund to
us; and therefore, if we wish to maintain “that proud submission,
that dignified obedience,” which binds the subject, through various
gradations, to the sovereign, we must teach our untractable spirits to
bend to the cogent reasons and salutary ordinances of high authority.

Women in every country have a greater influence than men choose to
confess.

  “Men’s earliest words are taught them from her lips.”

Though haughtiness of mind will not allow them always to acknowledge
the truth, yet we see the proof in its effects; and, in consequence,
must exhort women, by yielding their deference to the laws of honorary
precedence, to teach men to obey them; and rather to emulate such
distinctions, than seek to pull down the possessors to the level of the
common herd.




CONCLUSION.

  “Can comeliness of form, or shape, or air,
  With comeliness of words or deeds compare?
  No! those at first th’ unwary heart may gain,
  But these, these only, can the heart retain.”

  GAY.


When so much has been said of the body and its accoutrements, I cannot
but subjoin a few words on the intelligence which animates the frame,
and of the organ which imparts its meaning.

Connected speech is granted to mankind alone. Parrots may prate, and
monkeys chatter; but it is only to the reasonable being that power of
combining ideas, expressing their import, and uttering, in audible
sounds, in all its various gradations, the language of sense and
judgment, of love and resentment, is awarded as a gift, that gives us a
proud and undeniable superiority to all the rest of the creation.

To employ this faculty well and gracefully, is one grand object of
education. The mere organ itself, as to sound, is like a musical
instrument, to be modulated with elegance, or struck with the
disorderly nerve of coarseness and vulgarity.

I must add to what has been said before on the subject, that excessive
rapidity of speaking is, in general, even with a clear enunciation,
very disagreeable; but, when it is accompanied with a shrill voice,
the effect is inexpressibly discordant and hideous. The first orator
the heathen world ever knew, so far remedied the natural defects of
his speech, (and they were most embarrassing,) as to become the most
easy and persuasive of speakers. In like manner, when a young woman
finds any difficulty or inelegance in her organs, she ought to pay the
strictest attention to rectify the fault.

Should she have too quick or encumbered an articulation, she ought
to read with extreme slowness for several hours in the day, and even
pay attention, in speaking, to check the rapidity or confusion of her
utterance. By similar antidotal means, she must attack a propensity
of talking in a high key. Better err in the opposite extreme,
while she is prosecuting her cure, as the voice will gradually and
imperceptibly attain its most harmonious pitch, than, by at first
attempting the medium, most likely retain too much of the screaming
key. A clear articulation, a tempered intonation, and in a moderate
key, are essentials in the voice of an accomplished female. Her
graceful peculiarities must be the gift of nature, or the effect of
cultivated taste. Fine judgment and delicate sensibility are the best
schoolmistresses on this subject. Indeed, where, in relation to man or
woman, shall we find that an improved understanding, and enlightened
mind, and a refined taste, are not the best polishers of manners, and
in all respects the most efficient handmaids of the Muses?

Let me, then, in one short sentence, in one tender adieu, my fair
readers and endeared friends! enforce upon your minds, that if Beauty
be woman’s weapon, it must be feathered by the Graces, pointed by the
eye of Discretion, and shot by the hand of Virtue!

Look, then, my sweet pupils, not merely to your mirrors, when you would
decorate yourselves for conquest, but consult the _speculum_, which
will reflect your hearts and minds. Remember that it is the affections
of a sensible and reasonable soul you hope to subdue, and seek for arms
likely to carry the fortress.

He that is worthy, must love corresponding excellence. Which of you
all would wish to marry a man merely for the color of his eye, or
the shape of his leg? Think not then worse of him than you would do
of yourselves; and hope not to satisfy his better wishes with the
possession of a merely handsome wife.

Beauty of person will ever be found a dead letter, unless it be
animated with beauty of mind. “For ’tis the mind that makes the body
rich.” We must, then, not only cultivate the shape, the complexion, the
air, the attire, the manners, but most assiduously must our attention
be devoted to teach “the young idea how to shoot,” and to fashion the
unfolding mind to judgment and virtue. By such culture, it will not be
merely the charming girl, the captivating woman we shall present to
the world, but the dutiful daughter, affectionate sister, tender wife,
judicious mother, faithful friend, and amiable acquaintance.

Let these, then, be fair images which will form themselves on the
models drawn by my not inexperienced pen! Let me see Beauty, whose soul
is virtue, approach me with the chastened step of Modesty; and, ere
she advances from behind the heavenly cloud that envelops her, I shall
behold Love, and all the graces, hovering in air to adorn and attend
her charms.

This may be thy picture, lovely daughter of Albion! Make thyself, then
worthy of the likeness, and thou wilt fulfil the fondest wish of thine
unknown friend.




APPENDIX.




ON THE USE OF CORSETS.


The following pages are abridged by an eminent English physician from
an Essay on the Use of Corsets, by Soemmerring, the German physiologist:

Fashion lives on novelty, and we have on this account much charity for
its wanderings and eccentricities. Bonnets, with a snout as long as an
elephant’s proboscis, or a margin as broad as a Winchester bushel, are
merely ridiculous. Shoulders that look like wings, and sleeves as wide
as a petticoat, we think are not particularly graceful; but they have
at least the merit of being airy, and we take no offence. We cannot,
however, extend our indulgence to the compressed waist, which is the
rage at present. We know that as often as the waist is lengthened to
its natural limits, this tendency to abridge its diameter appears; and
we confess we are puzzled to account for the fact; for surely it is
strange, that a permanent prepossession should exist in favor of a mode
of dress which is at once ugly, unnatural, and pernicious. Were fashion
under the guidance of taste, the principles of drapery in painting
and sculpture would never be lost sight of in its changes. The clothes
that cover us may be disposed in an infinite variety of forms, without
violating those rules which the artist is careful to observe. The true
form of the body ought to be disclosed to the eye, without the shape
being exhibited in all its minutiæ, as in the dress of a harlequin;
but in no case should the natural proportions (supposing the figure to
be good) be changed. Ask the sculptor what he thinks of a fashionable
waist, pinched till it rivals the lady’s neck in tenuity, and he will
tell you it is monstrous. Consult the physician, and you will learn
that this is one of those follies in which no female can long indulge
with impunity; for health, and even life, are often sacrificed to it.

Corsets are used partly as a warm covering to the chest, and partly to
furnish a convenient attachment to other parts of the female dress.
This is all proper and correct; but to these uses fashion superadds
others, originating in fantastical notions of beauty. Corsets are
employed to modify the shape, to render the chest as small below, and
as broad above, as possible, and to increase the elevation, fulness,
and prominence of the bosom. To show how this affects the condition of
the body, we must begin by giving a short description of the thorax or
chest, which is the subject of this artificial compression.

Every one who has seen a skeleton, knows that the chest consists
of a cavity protected by a curious frame-work of bones. These are,
1st, the back-bone, (consisting of _vertebræ_, or short bones jointed
into one another,) which sustains the whole upper part of the trunk;
2d, the breast-bone, about seven or eight inches long, and composed
of three pieces; and 3dly, the ribs, of which there are generally
twentyfour. The twelve ribs on each side are all fixed to the back-bone
behind; seven of these, the seven uppermost, are also attached to the
breast-bone before, and are, therefore, called _true ribs_. The eighth
rib has its end turned up, and rests on the seventh; the ninth rests
in the same way on the eighth; but the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth
are not connected with one another in front at all. The fore extremity
of each rib consists not of bone, but of an elastic substance called
cartilage. The elasticity of this substance, combined with the oblique
position of the ribs, constitutes a beautiful provision, in consequence
of which the chest enlarges and contracts its volume, to afford free
play to the lungs.

We now wish to call attention to the form of this cavity, which, as
we have seen, is surrounded and protected by the back-bone, ribs, and
breast-bone, and is called the _thorax_, or chest. The uppermost pair
of ribs, which lie just at the bottom of the neck, are very short;
the next pair is rather longer; the third longer still; and thus they
go on increasing in length to the seventh pair, or last _true_ ribs,
after which the length diminishes, but without materially contracting
the size of the cavity, because the false ribs only go round a part of
the body. Hence the chest has a sort of conical shape, or it may be
compared to the bee-hives used in this country, the narrow or pointed
end being next the neck, and the broad end undermost. The natural form
of the thorax, in short, is just the reverse of the fashionable shape
of the waist. The latter is narrow below, and wide above; the former is
narrow above, and wide below.

The lower part of the thorax is also much more compressible, and of
course more easily injured by ligatures than the upper. In the upper
part, the bones form a complete circle; and, from the small obliquity
of the ribs, this circle presents a great power of resistance to
external pressure. But the last five ribs, called the false ribs,
besides being placed more obliquely, become weaker as they decrease
in length, and having no support in front, their power of resisting
external pressure is probably six times less than that of the true
ribs. Hence ligatures applied to this part of the body may contract the
natural size of the cavity perhaps one half. Nature, in this instance,
has entrusted the belle with a discretionary power, guarding against
its abuse, however, by severe penalties. If she chooses to _brave the
consequences_, she may always, with the help of lace and cord, produce
a great change on this part of her person.

From the great care nature has bestowed to strengthen the outer shell
of the thorax, and to combine mobility with strength, we may judge of
the importance of the organs within, and of the value of free motion
to their healthy action. It is a further proof of this, as Soemmerring
observes, that the ribs are the first part of the bony frame-work which
nature forms; for, in the unborn child, no other bones except those
of the ear are so perfect. The _contents_ of the thorax are,--first,
the heart, which is the centre of the circulating system, and which,
for the sake of its metaphorical offices, every lady must be anxious
to keep from injury;--next, the lungs, which occupy by far the largest
space, and of the delicacy of whose operations every one may judge.
There are, besides, either within the thorax, or in juxtaposition with
it, the stomach, liver, and kidneys, with the œsophagus, the trachea,
or windpipe, part of the intestines, and many nerves, all intimately
connected with the vital powers. Most of these organs are not only of
primary importance in themselves, but, through the nerves, arteries,
&c., their influence extends to the head, and the remotest parts of
the limbs, so that when they are injured, _health is poisoned at its
source_, and the mischief always travels to other parts of the system.

Imagine, now, what is the consequence of applying compression, by
corsets of some unyielding material, to a cavity enclosing so many
delicate organs, whose free action is essential to health. First, the
lowest part of the shell of the thorax yields most; the false ribs, and
the lower true ribs, are pressed inwards; the whole viscera in this
part of the body, including part of the intestines, are squeezed close
together and forced upwards; and, as the pressure is continued above,
they are forced higher still. If the lacing is carried further, the
breast-bone is raised, and sometimes bent; the collar-bone protrudes
its inner extremity; and the shoulder-blades are forced backwards.
The under part of the lungs is pressed together, and the entrance
of the blood into it hindered; the abdominal viscera, being least
protected, suffer severely; the stomach is compressed, its distention
prevented, and its situation and form changed, giving rise to imperfect
digestion; the blood is forced up to the head, where it generates
various complaints; the liver has its shape altered, and its functions
obstructed; the bones having their natural motions constrained,
distortion ensues, and the high shoulder, the twisted spine, or
breast-bone, begins at last to manifest itself through the integuments
and the clothes.

Another effect of tight corsets, says the essayist, is, that those
who have been long so closely laced, become at last unable to hold
themselves erect, or move with comfort without them, but, as is very
justly said, _fall together_, in consequence of the natural form
and position of the ribs being altered. The muscles of the back are
weakened and crippled, and cannot maintain themselves in their natural
position for any length of time. The spine, too, no longer accustomed
to bear the destined weight of the body, bends and sinks down. Where
tight lacing is practised, young women, from fifteen to twenty years
of age, are found so dependent upon their corsets, that they faint
whenever they lay them aside, and therefore are obliged to have
themselves laced before going to sleep. For as soon as the thorax and
abdomen are relaxed, by being deprived of their usual support, the
blood rushing downwards, in consequence of the diminished resistance
to its motion, empties the vessels of the head, and thus occasions
fainting.

“From 1760 to about 1770,” says Soemmerring, “it was the fashion in
Berlin and other parts of Germany, and also in Holland a few years
ago, to apply corsets to children. This practice fell into disuse,
in consequence of its being observed, that children who did not wear
corsets grew up straight, while those who were treated with this
extraordinary care, got by it a high shoulder or a hunch. Many families
might be named, in which parental fondness selected the handsomest of
several boys to put in corsets, and the result was, that these alone
were hunched. The deformity was attributed at first to the improper
mode of applying the corsets, till it was discovered that no child
thus invested, grew up straight, not to mention the risk of consumption
and rupture which were likewise incurred by using them. I, for my part,
affirm, that I do not know any woman who, by tight lacing, (that is,
by artificial means,) has obtained ‘a fine figure,’ in whom I could
not, by accurate examination, point out either a high shoulder, oblique
compressed ribs, a lateral incurvation of the spine in the form of
an italic _S_, or some other distortion. I have had opportunities of
verifying this opinion among ladies of high condition, who, as models
of fine form, were brought forward for the purpose of putting me to
silence.”

Young ladies in course of time hope to become wives, and wives to
become mothers. Even in this last stage, few females have the courage
to resist a practice which is in general use, though to them it is
trebly injurious. But it is sufficient to glance at this branch of
the subject, on which, for obvious reasons, we cannot follow our
medical instructer. It is lamentable, however, that mothers who have
themselves experienced the bitter fruits of tight lacing, still permit
their daughters to indulge in it. There is, in truth, no tyranny like
the tyranny of fashion. “I have found mothers of discernment and
experience,” says Soemmerring, “who predicted that in their 25th year,
a hunch would inevitably be the lot of their daughters, whom they
nevertheless allowed to wear corsets, because they were afraid to make
their children singular.”

But it is time to speak of the diseases produced by the passion for
_slender waists_. “One is astonished,” says Soemmerring, “at the number
of diseases which corsets occasion. Those I have subjoined rest on the
authority of the most eminent physicians. Tight lacing produces--

“Headach, giddiness, tendency to fainting, pain in the eyes, pain
and ringing in the ears, bleeding at the nose, shortness of breath,
spitting of blood, consumption, derangement of the circulation,
palpitation of the heart, water in the chest, loss of appetite,
squeamishness, eructations, vomiting of blood, depraved digestion,
flatulence, diarrhœa, colic pains, induration of the liver, dropsy, and
rupture. It is also followed by melancholy, hysteria, and many diseases
peculiar to the female constitution, which it is not necessary to
enumerate in detail.”

But the injury does not fall merely on the inward structure of the
body, but also on its outward beauty, and on the temper and feelings
with which that beauty is associated. Beauty is in reality but another
name for that expression of countenance which is the index of sound
health, intelligence, good feelings, and peace of mind. All are aware,
that uneasy feelings, existing habitually in the breast, speedily
exhibit their signature on the countenance; and that bitter thoughts,
or a bad temper, spoil the human face divine of its grace. But it
is not so generally known that irksome or painful sensations, though
merely of a physical nature, by a law equally certain, rob the temper
of its sweetness, and, as a consequence, the countenance of the more
ethereal and better part of its beauty. Pope attributes the rudeness
of a person usually bland and polished, to the circumstance, that “he
had not dined;” in other words, his stomach was in bad order. But there
are many other physical pains besides hunger that sour the temper; and,
for our part, if we found ourselves sitting at dinner with a man whose
body was girt on all sides by board and bone, like the north pole by
thick-ribbed ice, we should no more expect to find grace, politeness,
amenity, vivacity, and good-humor, in such a companion, than in
Prometheus with a vulture battening on his vitals, or in Cerberus,
whose task is to growl all day long in his chains.




ON THE LADIES’ PASSION FOR LEVELLING ALL DISTINCTION OF DRESS.


Foreigners observe that there are no ladies in the world more
beautiful, or more ill-dressed, than those of England. Our countrywomen
have been compared to those pictures, where the face is the work of
a Raphael, but the draperies thrown out by some empty pretender,
destitute of taste, and entirely unacquainted with design.

If I were a poet, I might observe on this occasion, that so much
beauty, set off with all the advantages of dress, would be too powerful
an antagonist for the opposite sex; and therefore it was wisely ordered
that our ladies should want taste, lest their admirers should entirely
want reason.

But, to confess the truth, I do not find they have greater aversion to
fine clothes than the women of any other country whatsoever. I cannot
fancy that a shopkeeper’s wife in Cheapside has a greater tenderness
for the fortune of her husband, than a citizen’s wife in Paris; or
that miss in a boarding-school is more an economist in dress than
mademoiselle in a nunnery.

Although Paris may be accounted the soil in which almost every fashion
takes its rise, its influence is never so general there as with us.
They study there the happy method of uniting grace and fashion, and
never excuse a woman for being awkwardly dressed, by saying her clothes
are in the mode. A Frenchwoman is a perfect architect in dress; she
never, with Gothic ignorance, mixes the orders; she never tricks out
a squabby Doric shape with Corinthian finery; or, to speak without
metaphor, she conforms to general fashion only when it happens not to
be repugnant to private beauty.

The English ladies, on the contrary, seem to have no other standard
of grace but the run of the town. If fashion gives the word, every
distinction of beauty, complexion, of stature, ceases. Sweeping trains,
Prussian bonnets, and trollopees, as like each other as if cut from
the same piece, level all to one standard. The Mall, the gardens,
and playhouses, are filled with ladies in uniform; and their whole
appearance shows as little variety of taste as if their clothes were
bespoke by the colonel of a marching regiment, or fancied by the artist
who dresses the three battalions of guards.

But not only the ladies of every shape and complexion, but of every
age too, are possessed of this unaccountable passion for levelling
all distinction in dress. The lady of no quality travels first behind
the lady of some quality; and a woman of sixty is as gaudy as her
grand-daughter. A friend of mine, a good-natured old man, amused me
the other day with an account of his journey to the Mall. It seems,
in his walk thither, he, for some time, followed a lady, who, as he
thought, by her dress, was a girl of fifteen. It was airy, elegant, and
youthful. My old friend had called up all his poetry on this occasion,
and fancied twenty Cupids prepared for execution in every folding of
her white negligee. He had prepared his imagination for an angel’s
face;--but what was his mortification to find that the imaginary
goddess was no other than his cousin Hannah, some years older than
himself!

But to give it in his own words: “After the transports of our first
salute,” said he, “were over, I could not avoid running my eye over
her whole appearance. Her gown was of cambric, cut short before, in
order to discover a high-heeled shoe, which was buckled almost at the
toe. Her cap consisted of a few bits of cambric, and flowers of painted
paper stuck on one side of her head. Her bosom, that had felt no hand
but the hand of time these twenty years, rose, suing to be pressed. I
could, indeed, have wished her more than a handkerchief of Paris net,
to shade her beauties; for, as Tasso says of the rose-bud, ‘_Quanto si
nostra men, tanto e pin bella_.’ A female breast is generally thought
most beautiful as it is more sparingly discovered.

“As my cousin had not put on all this finery for nothing, she was
at that time sallying out to the Park, where I had overtaken her.
Perceiving, however, that I had on my best wig, she offered, if I would
squire her there, to send home the footman. Though I trembled for our
reception in public, yet I could not, with any civility, refuse; so,
to be as gallant as possible, I took her hand in my arm, and thus we
marched on together.

“When we made our entry at the Park, two antiquated figures, so polite
and so tender, soon attracted the eyes of the company. As we made our
way among the crowds, who were out to show their finery as well as we,
wherever we came, I perceived we brought good humor with us. The polite
could not forbear smiling, and the vulgar burst out into a horse-laugh
at our grotesque figures. Cousin Hannah, who was perfectly conscious of
the rectitude of her own appearance, attributed all this mirth to the
oddity of mine; while I as cordially placed the whole to her account.
Thus, from being two of the best-natured creatures alive, before we
got half way up the Mall, we both began to grow peevish, and like two
mice on a string, endeavored to revenge the impertinence of others
upon ourselves. ‘I am amazed, cousin Jeffery,’ says Miss, ‘that I can
never get you to dress like a Christian. I knew we should have the
eyes of the Park upon us, with your great wig, so frizzled, and yet so
beggarly, and your monstrous muff. I hate those odious muffs.’ I could
have patiently borne a criticism on all the rest of my equipage; but
as I had always a peculiar veneration for my muff, I could not forbear
being piqued a little; and throwing my eyes with a spiteful air on her
bosom, ‘I could heartily wish, madam,’ replied I, ‘that, for your sake,
my muff was cut into a tippet.’

“As my cousin, by this time, was grown heartily ashamed of her
gentleman usher, and as I was never very fond of any kind of exhibition
myself, it was mutually agreed to retire for a while to one of the
seats, and, from that retreat, remark on others as freely as they had
remarked on us.

“When seated, we continued silent for some time, employed in very
different speculations. I regarded the whole company, now passing
in review before me, as drawn out merely for my amusement. For my
entertainment, the beauty had, all that morning, been improving her
charms: the beau had put on lace, and the young doctor a big wig,
merely to please me. But quite different were the sentiments of
cousin Hannah: she regarded every well-dressed woman as a victorious
rival; hated every face that seemed dressed in good humor, or wore
the appearance of greater happiness than her own. I perceived her
uneasiness, and attempted to lessen it, by observing that there was no
company in the Park to-day. To this she readily assented; ‘and yet,’
says she, ‘it is full enough of scrubs of one kind or another.’ My
smiling at this observation gave her spirits to pursue the bent of
her inclination, and now she began to exhibit her skill in secret
history, as she found me disposed to listen. ‘Observe,’ says she to me,
‘that old woman in tawdry silk, and dressed out beyond the fashion.
That is Miss Biddy Evergreen. Miss Biddy, it seems, has money; and as
she considers that money was never so scarce as it is now, she seems
resolved to keep what she has to herself. She is ugly enough, you see;
yet, I assure you, she has refused several offers, to my knowledge,
within this twelvemonth. Let me see;--three gentlemen from Ireland, who
study the law, two waiting captains, her doctor, and a Scotch preacher,
who had liked to have carried her off. All her time is passed between
sickness and finery. Thus she spends the whole week in a close chamber,
with no other company but her monkey, her apothecary, and cat; and
comes dressed out to Park every Sunday, to show her airs, to get new
lovers, to catch a new cold, and to make new work for the doctor.

“‘There goes Mrs. Roundabout, I mean the fat lady in the lustring
trollopee. Between you and I, she is but a cutler’s wife. See how
she’s dressed, as fine as hands and pins can make her, while her two
marriageable daughters, like bunters in stuff gowns, are now taking
six-penny-worth of tea at the White-conduit house. Odious puss, how
she waddles along, with her train two yards behind her! She puts me
in mind of my Lord Bantam’s Indian sheep, which are obliged to have
their monstrous tails trundled along in a go-cart. For all her airs, it
goes to her husband’s heart to see four yards of good lustring wearing
against the ground, like one of his knives on a grindstone. To speak
my mind, cousin Jeffery, I never liked those tails: for suppose a
young fellow should be rude, and the lady should offer to step back in
the fright, instead of retiring, she treads upon her train, and falls
fairly on her back; and then you know, cousin,--her clothes may be
spoiled.

“‘Ah! Miss Mazzard! I knew we should not miss her in the Park; she in
the monstrous Prussian bonnet. Miss, though so very fine, was bred
a milliner; and might have had some custom, if she had minded her
business; but the girl was fond of finery, and, instead of dressing her
customers, laid out all her goods in adorning herself. Every new gown
she put on impaired her credit; she still, however, went on, improving
her appearance, and lessening her little fortune, and is now, you see,
become a belle and a bankrupt.’

“My cousin was proceeding in her remarks, which were interrupted by
the approach of the very lady she had been so freely describing. Miss
had perceived her at a distance, and approached to salute her. I found
by the warmth of the two ladies’ protestations, that they had been
long intimate, esteemed friends and acquaintance. Both were so pleased
at this happy rencounter, that they were resolved not to part for
the day. So we all crossed the Park together, and I saw them into a
hackney-coach at St. James’s.”

  OLIVER GOLDSMITH.




RECIPES.


_Paste of Palermo._

This paste for the hands, to use instead of soap, preserves them from
chapping, smooths their surface, and renders them soft.

Taken, pound of soft soap, half a pint of salad oil, the same quantity
of spirits of wine, the juice of three lemons, a little silver sand,
and a sufficient quantity of what perfume pleases the sense. The oil
and soap must be first boiled together in an earthen pipkin. The other
ingredients to be added after boiling; and, when cool, amalgamate into
a paste with the hands.


_Fard._

This useful paste is good for taking off sunburnings, effects of
weather on the face, and accidental cutaneous eruptions. It must be
applied at going to bed. First wash the face with its usual ablution,
and when dry, rub this fard all over it, and go to rest with it on the
skin. This is excellent for almost constant use. Take two ounces of
oil of sweet almonds, ditto of spermaceti; melt them in a pipkin over a
slow fire. When they are dissolved and mixed, take it off the fire, and
stir into it one tablespoonful of fine honey. Continue stirring it till
it is cold, and then it is fit for use.


_Lip Salve._

A quarter of a pound of hard marrow from the marrow-bone. Melt it over
a slow fire, as it dissolves gradually, pour the liquid marrow into an
earthen pipkin; then add to it an ounce of spermaceti, twenty raisins
of the sun, stoned, and a small portion of alcanna root, sufficient to
color it a bright vermilion. Simmer these ingredients over a slow fire
for ten minutes, then strain the whole through muslin; and, while hot,
stir into it one teaspoonful of the balsam of Peru. Pour it into the
boxes in which it is to remain; it will there stiffen, and become fit
for use.


_Lavender Water._

Take of rectified spirits of wine half a pint, essential oil of
lavender two drachms, otto of roses five drops. Mix all together in a
bottle, and cork it for use.


_Unction de Maintenon._

The use of this is to remove freckles. The mode of application is
this:--Wash the face at night with elder-flower water, then anoint
it with the unction. In the morning cleanse your skin from its oily
adhesion, by washing it copiously in rose-water.

Take of Venice soap an ounce, dissolve it in half an ounce of
lemon-juice, to which add of oil of bitter-almonds and deliquidated oil
of tartar, each a quarter of an ounce. Let the mixture be placed in the
sun till it acquires the consistence of ointment. When in this state,
add three drops of the oil of rhodium, and keep it for use.


_Creme de l’Enclos._

This is an excellent wash, to be used night and morning, for the
removal of tan.

Take half a pint of milk, with the juice of a lemon, and a spoonful of
white brandy, boil the whole, and skim it clear from all scum. When
cool, it is ready for use.


_Pommade de Seville._

This simple application is much in request with the Spanish ladies,
for taking off the effects of the sun, and to render the complexion
brilliant.

Take equal parts of lemon-juice and white of eggs. Beat the whole
together in a varnished earthen pipkin, and set on a slow fire. Stir
the fluid with a wooden spoon till it has acquired the consistence of
soft pomatum. Perfume it with some sweet essence, and before you apply
it, carefully wash the face with rice water.


_Beaume à l’Antique._

This is a very fine cure for chapped lips. Take four ounces of the oil
of roses, half an ounce of white wax, and half an ounce of spermaceti;
melt them in a glass vessel, and stir them with a wooden spoon; pour it
out into glass cups for use.


_Wash for the Hair._

This is a cleanser and brightener of the head and hair, and should be
applied in the morning.

Beat up the whites of six eggs into a froth, and with that anoint the
head close to the roots of the hair. Leave it to dry on; then wash the
head and hair thoroughly with a mixture of rum and rose-water in equal
quantities.


_Aura and Cephalus._

This curious recipe is of Grecian origin, as its name plainly
indicates, and it is said to have been very efficacious in preventing,
or even removing, premature wrinkles from the face of the Athenian fair.

Put some powder of the best myrrh upon an iron plate, sufficiently
heated to melt the gum gently, and when it liquifies, hold your
face over it, at a proper distance to receive the fumes without
inconvenience; and that you may reap the whole benefit of the
fumigation, cover your head with a napkin. It must be observed,
however, that if the applicant feels any headache, she must desist, as
the remedy will not suit her constitution, and ill consequences might
possibly ensue.


_Madame Recamier’s Pommade._

This was communicated by this lady as being used in France and Italy,
by those who professionally, or by choice, are engaged in exercises
which require long and great exertions of the limbs, as dancing,
playing on instruments, &c.

Take any suitable quantity of _Axungia Cervi_, i. e. the fat of a red
stag or hart; add to it the same quantity of olive oil, (Florence oil
is preferable to any of the kind,) and half the quantity of virgin wax;
melt the whole in an earthen vessel, well glazed, over a slow fire,
and, when properly mixed, leave it to cool. This ointment has been
applied also with considerable efficacy in cases of rheumatism.


_A Wash for the Face._

This recipe is well known in France, and much extolled by the ladies of
that country as efficacious and harmless.

Take equal parts of the seeds of the melon, pompion, gourd, and
cucumber, pounded and reduced to powder or meal; add to it fresh
cream, sufficient to dilute the flour; beat all up together, adding
a sufficient quantity of milk, as it may be required, to make an
ointment, and then apply it to the face; leave it there for half an
hour, and then wash it off with warm soft water.


_A Paste for the Skin._

This may be recommended in cases when the skin seems to get too loosely
attached to the muscles.

Boil the whites of four eggs in rose-water, add to it a sufficient
quantity of alum; beat the whole together till it takes the consistence
of a paste. This will give, when applied, great firmness to the skin.


_A Wash to give Lustre to the Face._

Infuse wheat-bran well sifted, for three or four hours in white wine
vinegar; add to it five yolks of eggs and a grain or two of ambergris,
and distil the whole. When the bottle is carefully corked, keep it for
twelve or fifteen days before you make use of it.


_Pimpernel Water._

Pimpernel is a most wholesome plant, and often used on the continent
for the purpose of whitening the complexion; it is there in so high
reputation, that it is said generally, that it ought to be continually
on the toilet of every lady who cares for the brightness of her skin.


_Eau de Veau._

Boil a calf’s foot in four quarts of river water till it is reduced to
half the quantity. Add half a pound of rice, and boil it with crumb of
white bread steeped in milk, a pound of fresh butter, and the whites of
five fresh eggs; mix with them a small quantity of camphor and alum,
and distil the whole. This recipe may be strongly recommended; it is
most beneficial to the skin, which it lubricates and softens to a very
comfortable degree. The best manner of distilling these ingredients is
in the _balneum mariæ_; that is, in a bottle placed in boiling water.


_Rose Water._

Put some roses into water, add to them a few drops of acid; the
vitriolic acid seems to be preferable to any--soon the water will
assume both the color and perfume of the roses.


_Another._

Take two pounds of rose-leaves, place them on a napkin tied round the
edges of a basin filled with hot water, and put a dish of cold water
upon the leaves; keep the bottom water hot, and change the water at top
as soon as it begins to grow warm; by this kind of distillation you
will extract a great quantity of the essential oil of the roses by a
process which cannot be expensive, and will prove very beneficial.


_Virgin Milk._

A publication of this kind would certainly be looked upon as an
imperfect performance, if we omitted to say a few words upon this
famous cosmetic. It consists of a tincture of benjoin, precipitated by
water. The tincture of benjoin is obtained by taking a certain quantity
of that gum, pouring spirits of wine upon it, and boiling it till it
becomes a rich tincture. If you pour a few drops of this tincture into
a glass of water, it will produce a mixture which will assume all the
appearance of milk, and retain a very agreeable perfume. If the face is
washed with this mixture, it will, by calling the purple stream of the
blood to the external fibres of the epidermis, produce on the cheeks a
beautiful rosy color; and, if left on the face to dry, it will render
it clear and brilliant. It also removes spots, freckles, pimples,
erysipelatous eruptions, &c. &c. if they have not been of long standing
on the skin.


_Lavender Water._

Take four handfuls of dried lavender flowers, and sprinkle on them
one quart of brandy, the same quantity of white wine and rose-water;
leave them to remain six days in a large bottle well-corked up; let the
liquor be distilled and poured off.


_Sweet-scented Water._

This agreeably-scented water is not only a pleasant cosmetic, but also
of great use in nervous disorders.

Put one quart of rose-water, and the same quantity of orange-water,
into a large and wide-mouthed glass; strew upon it two handfuls of
jessamine flowers, put the glass in the _balneum mariæ_, or on a slow
fire, and when it is distilled, add to it a scruple of musk and the
same quantity of ambergris.


_Eau d’Ange._

Pound in a mortar fifteen cloves and one pound of cinnamon, and put the
whole into a quart of water, with four grains of anniseed; let it stand
over a charcoal fire twentyfour hours, then strain off the liquor, and
put it up for use. This perfume is most excellent, and will do well for
the hands, face, and hair, to which it communicates a very agreeable
scent.


_Remedy for the Toothache._

In two drachms of rectified spirits of wine dissolve one drachm of
camphire, five grains of prepared opium, and ten drops of oil of box;
mix them well, and keep it well corked for use. If the pain arise from
a hollow tooth, four or five drops on cotton to be put into the tooth;
or six or seven drops to be put on cotton into the ear on the side
where the pain is felt. Should the patient not feel easier in a quarter
of an hour, the same may be repeated. It has never failed on the second
application.


_An excellent Eye-Water._

Take six ounces of rectified spirits of wine, dissolve in it one drachm
of camphire, and half a pint of elder-flower water. Wash the eyes night
and morning with this liquid; it clears the vision, and strengthens the
sight.


_Dentifrice._

The following is one of the best recipes for tooth-powder:--

Take of prepared chalk six ounces, cassia powder, half an ounce,
orris-root, an ounce. These are to be well mixed, and may be colored
with red lake, or any other innocent substance, according to the fancy
of the user. This dentifrice is to be used with a firm brush every
morning; the teeth should also be brushed before going to bed, but it
is seldom necessary to use the powder more than once a day.


THE END.




Transcriber’s Notes

Minor errors in punctuation and spelling have been corrected.

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